Nineteen Eighty-Four: a Dystopian Novel

Dozens of utopias were written in the late 19th-early 20thC. For example, Wells' A Modern Utopia (1905) contains many elements which Huxley parodies: eugenics, 'free love', social engineering, etc. Further elements may come from The first men in the moon (1901), especially Wells' descriptions of the Selenite society which breeds citizens in bottles who are perfectly adapted to their work.

Orwell received many influences before and after the elaboration of 1984. Among the first influences, we should mention an extense tradition of utopian and dystopian novels, the most important ones are written by William Morris, H.G. Wells (A Modern Utopia), and Aldous Huxley (A Brave New World ), but above all Eugene Zamiatin.

Among all these writers the one who has been considered his direct antecedent is Zamiatin. It is evident that there are similitudes in both of them. They were revolutionaris, but with different characteristics, both of them were worried about the middle classes and the disasters that industralization was carrying.

Orwell was fascinated with Zamiatin's universe, whose details were as cruel as the ones in 1984. Eugene Zamiatin's We (1924) is a dystopia by a Russian which describes a mechasised, deshumanised and collective future society, where the hero "D503" is also an atavistic throwback.