
Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980) - monort
http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
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mannykannot
This is not one of Asimov's best works. While he is probably right about
Orwell's feud with Stalinism, to judge 1984 by how well it predicts the future
is beside the point, just as it would be a mistake to judge Asimov's own work
by the accuracy of his imagining of future computer technology.

Asimov's dismissal of 'newspeak' as mostly just abbreviation completely
overlooks the power of propaganda and fake news, or the Whorfian concept that
underlies it. He complains that a human-operated surveillance state would not
work, but this review was written before the opening of the Stasi files
revealed how it does. Asimov's suggestion that Orwell should have posited
automated surveillance does, of course, foreshadow what is becoming possible
now, but he does not seem to do any better than Orwell in imagining such a
future.

Orwell's renaming of Britain as 'Airstrip One' shows that, far from thinking
of Oceania as the British Empire, he regards Britain as a satellite state of
the USA, analogous to the cold war status of Eastern European states.

I had to chuckle at Asimov's complaints of sexism and racial bigotry in the
novel, considering the prevalence of these things in his beloved 'golden age'
science fiction, and for some time after.

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dragonwriter
> Asimov's dismissal of 'newspeak' as mostly just abbreviation completely
> overlooks the power of propaganda and fake news, or the Whorfian concept
> that underlies it.

But the strong Sapir-Whorf position of linguistic determinism in which the
concept of newspeak is firmly grounded has generally been rejected and was
never well supported; propaganda more generally is a different issue than
newspeak specifically.

~~~
WorldMaker
It's also entirely possible that even if Asimov had been introduced to the
hypothesis at the time that he may have sided with Sapir and Whorf themselves
who felt the Strong position was untenable for more than a thought experiment
(ie, that it was a proper Null Hypothesis designed to be disproven, to prove
more useful things such as some of the corollaries to the Weak version of the
Hypothesis). Asimov would have probably loved that about the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis, given the implication that he and (John W.) Campbell built the
Three Laws as a Null Hypothesis to disprove. [1] Makes you wonder if Campbell
had taken a fancy to Sapir-Whorf as much as he did Psionics or Robotics what
sorts of sci-fi might have mined that concept; an Asimov Sapir-Whorf novel
might have been fascinating.

[1] I personally am on the side that the novels do manage to disprove the
Three Laws several times, particularly in that the Zeroth Law is a huge
consequent failure in the Laws (resulting directly in the failure of the
Empire and a lot of the weirdness of the Foundation era), but it's a
fascinating debate on both sides, and an interesting question of which side
Asimov himself was on at various points in his career.

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mathiasrw
If you would like to read the book again:
[http://1984.surge.sh](http://1984.surge.sh)

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tk75x
In the comments: reviews of a review of a book.

