We

The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review section has a nice little review by Adam Hill of a new translation of the first modern sci-fi totalitarianism masterpiece, the 1921 Soviet novel We by Yevgeny (Eugene) Zamyatin.

We, sometimes translated as My, is a purported influence on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (although according to Hill Huxley claimed never to have read it) and George Orwell's 1984 (Orwell did indeed review Zamyatin's book in print before writing his own masterpiece).

Thanks to a life-changing high school English teacher, Jocelyn Jerry of Bethlehem Central in Delmar, NY, I read We as part of her half-year "Literature of the Future" course. We read it before 1984 and the plotting is unmistakably similar (and, to a lesser degree, Huxley's novel):

Single-rule state that controls all media and forbids spontaneity, typical educated bureaucrat protagonist (1st person diary entries) who always toes the line, enter the subversive romantic interest who rocks his world, protagonist becomes enemy of the state, betrayals and punishment...all written in much more sparse and poetic style than Orwell or Huxley, more in keeping with some of what was happening in Modernist literature circa 1921.

The one fascinating element in We that makes it cerebrally unique among those novels is the emphasis on mathematics, not just in the names given to all the characters, but in the fundamental organization of the society itself:

Central to the functioning the One State is the great Table of Hours. This table is the schedule which lays out the entire workings of the State machine. "Every morning, with six-wheeled precision we -- millions of us -- get up as one. At the same hour, in million-headed unison we start work; and in million-headed unison we end it." (Third entry, p12) This brings to mind scenes from the early silent movie Metropolis, where columns of workers march in lockstep from their homes to their places in the factory and back. The coordination of society described sometimes verges on the absurd, for example specifying the exact motions required for each morsel of food; "fused in the same million-handed body, at the same second, designated by the Table, we lift our spoons to our mouths." (Third Entry, p12) It is the presumption the Table that it is a formula for (near) perfect happiness: calculated, derived, distilled, pinned down and figured to mathematically elegant exactness. In computer science terms, it is an optimal schedule. Everything has been accounted for; there exists no better way for society to function. People are gears: how they mesh with others is predetermined by the Table. The guardians exist to keep the gears well oiled and replace them when they break.

Kinda speaks to an age where our Federal government is seriously considering national identity cards. How do you feel about being in BushCheneyCo's database?

Although over time (er...three decades) the details have slipped away, I've never forgotten the novel and occasionally recommended it although I'm guessing with little result. Now that the new translation is out and Americans are concerned about the line between democracy and tyranny, I'm hoping the novel gets more renown. Much like the recently deceased Stanislaw Lem, Zamyatin brings a particularly resonant voice to his science fiction, the resonance of Soviet-era fascism and its direct effect on people's lives -- and thoughts.

Hill writes in his review:

Zamyatin had been a notable Bolshevik: He had been punished and persecuted as such by the czarist authorities before the revolution succeeded in 1917. But quickly he became disenchanted and then disgusted with the authoritarian tendencies that emerged under Lenin. A true revolutionary, Zamyatin could not abide by the stifling conformity and prescriptive controls placed upon artists. And so he became a sharp critic, and soon thereafter a silenced dissident.

Zamyatin was never allowed to publish in Russia again, accepted exile to Paris and died there with an unfinished manuscript, poverty-stricken, in 1937. He fell victim to the same dystopian society he based his book on.

Was it worth it to become father of Orwell and Huxley, and granddaddy to Lem and Philip K. Dick?