A few years ago, I thought it was time to retire George Orwell’s 1984 to the attic. My years of teaching literature convinced me that Huxley’s Brave New World was more likely to unfold: a world in which an elite might control the rest of us through the erasure of history and literature, but who might also pacify common citizens through the diversions of sex, drugs, and electronic entertainment.

I was dead wrong. Continue reading →