1984 was published in 1949. Brave New World in 1931. Of course, long before either of these Brits could get spooked by machine-like totalitarian communism, Russians were already getting spooked by their own country. In the 20s, Mikhail Bulgakov and Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, to name a couple whose objections and subversiveness guaranteed that their finest works went unpublished in their lifetimes. And even earlier, only just after the revolution in 1920, Yevgeny Zamyatin anticipated much of that which was to come, in his own country and via interpeting pens abroad. Even so early, socialist realist ideas were already blotting out opposing viewpoints and We could only be published abroad, and then only to get an unrepentant Zamyatin blacklisted in the late 20s.

Fortunately, Zamyatin's vision of a restrictive, de-individualized society is not merely a clairvoyant historical curiosity, but a fully realized story, equally of adventure and philosophy. Particularly interesting is how our mathematician-narrator's objectivity falls apart as his confidence in the One State of the Benefactor is shaken: haunted by previously-thought-eradicated dreams and the stirrings of a soul, his words slide ever-further into lyrical proto-surreal passages, his politics and lack of imagination compromised in parallel to his continuing anguish. For such a previously mathematical mind, he's also given to leaving a lot of ambiguities and incomplete thoughts, which works well to heighten the sense of mounting anarchy, even if things can become a little vague at moments.