Scan barcode
A review by benmsmith
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
3.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for an ARC of this title.
This was a fascinating read, if not entirely my cup of tea. It's easy to see where authors like Orwell and Huxley got inspiration from how this portrays a dystopian society based on equality, and it's equally easy to see this as prescient for the way the soviet era would and wouldn't work, but the way we wrote sci-fi in the 1920s and 30s just _does not work_ for me as a modern reader. That's entirely on me, and if it's more your vibe, you're going to like this.
The intro from Margaret Atwood is nice, though ill-timed given some of her recent comments. I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from those so I was perhaps less willing to deal with an intro from her than if I had read this a month or two ago. The essay from LeGuin is great, as so much of her stuff is.
This was a fascinating read, if not entirely my cup of tea. It's easy to see where authors like Orwell and Huxley got inspiration from how this portrays a dystopian society based on equality, and it's equally easy to see this as prescient for the way the soviet era would and wouldn't work, but the way we wrote sci-fi in the 1920s and 30s just _does not work_ for me as a modern reader. That's entirely on me, and if it's more your vibe, you're going to like this.
The intro from Margaret Atwood is nice, though ill-timed given some of her recent comments. I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from those so I was perhaps less willing to deal with an intro from her than if I had read this a month or two ago. The essay from LeGuin is great, as so much of her stuff is.