1984 was projected by Orwell to be the year of Big Brother and the time of Newspeak. But 1984 is at hand and Big Brother has assumed a different and more real form. Newspeak has been replaced by the new language of the programmers and computer microchips and the prospects of the years to come now have a more sharply defined and less human form. A. E: van Vogt, master of innovative science fiction, has brought this vision of the days to come into focus with his new novel, the story of our world under the cold and emotionless eye of the almighty computers in conflict with the efforts of just flesh-and-blood people to achieve some way of asserting free will beyond the scope of mechanical programming. Here is a novel to read after you have re-read 1984 and to set alongside van Vogt's classic works for prophetic science fiction. First published in France in 1983. |
