Orwell, Kafka, or Persun?

 
So, according to WebProNews book sales have spiked for Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four where the phrase “Big Brother” came from. Other dystopian novels have seen an increase in sales, too, like Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Huxley’s Brave New World . Sales have also increased for my own novel Cathedral of Dreams (thank you very much). People want to understand what is going on in the news, how important is it that the NSA is collecting data via phones and internet? And I, for one, think it’s great that people are turning to books to read different opinions on the subject. That’s the only way you learn enough to make up your own mind. Research. Know your enemy (if there is one at all).
 And now, it’s Kafka’s The Trial that’s being suggestive of looking at the situation in the right way. In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Rebecca J. Rosen quotes Daniel J. Solove who purports that, “This issue is not about whether the information gathered is something people want to hide, but rather about the power and the structure of government.” Is it? I’m not convinced that’s what this is about. But, then again, it’s just another opinion, and I have more books to read.
I’ve got to say that I’ve attacked this subject straight on in my novel The NSA Files . The difference is that I’m a fiction writer (oh, yeah, so are all the rest of those being mentioned above). Yes, fiction gets to explore ideas and concepts more thoroughly and more emotionally than non-fiction for the most case. And, most nonfiction on this subject refers to fiction. Look, I don’t have any answers, but I do know what happens in The NSA Files, and it’s all about when the government might be doing the right thing. Even if you don’t agree with all this surveillance that’s going on, sometimes the government actually does the right thing. So, it’s one thing to run and buy all the dystopian novels, but doesn’t that mean that you’ve already decided that the government is wrong? Let’s say what they’re doing isn’t always bad. After all, it’s our government. 
To close, I’m not here to tell anyone what to believe, but only to encourage your reading to go in both directions. Don’t make a decision based on only one side of the coin. After all, we’re giving Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn a hell of a lot of information about us, and few people are too worried about that—or about what they’re doing with that data.

Here’s a thought: what if several of the major social media sites were bought out by aforeign high-tech company? What would they do with all our information?
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Terry Persun writes in many genres, including historical fiction, mainstream, literary, and science fiction/fantasy. He is a Pushcart nominee. His latest poetry collection is And Now This . His novel, Cathedral of Dreams was a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year finalist in the science fiction category, and his novel Sweet Song won a Silver IPPY Award. His latest novel, Ten Months in Wonderland , is the story of one Airman stationed in Thailand at the end of the Vietnam War and how he gets caught up in the seedy underworld of booze and prostitutes. Find Terry online at TerryPersun.com and on Amazon here.