We: 100th Anniversary Edition

Written in 1921 and published in 1924, "We", a stunning dystopian novel, was a sure precursor of both the "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and "1984" by George Orwell. People known as "numbers" (each having a number for a name); glass houses with curtains coming down only for a scheduled intimate hour; "Guardians" watching over everyone's move for any deviation from the norm - the norm being people with "faces not shadowed by things as insane as thoughts", with no idea about "that primitive state known as freedom" by "the ancients" - the protagonist (Number D-503) is fine with it all, happy actually... i.e. until, due to certain events and encounters he wakes up from this happy robotic slumber and starts to actually feel human (or having "developed a soul" - as a local doctor alarmingly diagnoses him). D-503 is not alone in this, he finally realizes! And he fully understands the danger of such a deviation in this society called "One State", with one and only "Benefactor" as a ruler. He records everything that is happening every day for this short period of his life. Somehow one thing leads to another: an incident prompts an "improper" thought, a flight of fancy, and, incredibly, the usual complacency and false happiness start taking the backseat. And to make matters more difficult - ahead looms the "Operation" that the State feels it must perform to prevent the "numbers" (citizens of the One State) from developing imagination that would lead to freedom of thought and all that it entails!..Events fly with unimaginable speed, as D-503 is seemingly inadvertently exposing the dystopian society in which he lives, while bringing up the memories of "the ancients" whose life was strewn with mistakes and wars and faults of all kinds, not perfect by any means, but human, not robotic as here in this society. The question of happiness is foremost. The denouement is expected and unexpected at the same time...Once in a while a book comes along that shakes your whole core. "We" was such a book for me. And to think that I have never heard of this author, until a friend on this site brought it to my attention! Eternally grateful... And to add to that - I agree with the friend reviewer that this book can be considered a masterpiece.

Written in the early 1920’s by Yevgeny Zamyatin, this is a book that was most certainly leveraged by George Orwell when he wrote 1984, and is every bit just as worthy of being considered a masterpiece. It tells the tale of an aeronautical engineer in the distant future who is joyfully living under a totalitarian regime so intrusive that even the sense of individuality has been removed from its citizens. They are part of “We,” referred to by numbers, living in glass apartments where all of their movements (with the exception of state-licensed sexual encounters) are visible to their neighbors. Their time is scheduled by the State, they attend State executions, and they dutifully report to have their imaginations excised in a precise brain operation. Then one day, he meets and falls for a woman who seems to operate a little bit outside of the rules, challenging his views of the world and himself.As Margaret Atwood so perfectly summarizes in the Introduction, “Zamyatin was writing WE in 1920-21, while the civil war that followed the Bolshevik-dominated October Revolution was still ongoing. Zamyatin himself, having been a member of the movement before 1905, was an Old Bolshevik (a group slated for liquidation by Stalin in the 1930s because they stuck to their original democratic-communist ideals instead of going along with Comrade Stalin’s autocracy) – but now that the Bolshevik’s were winning the civil war, Zamyatin didn’t like the way things were going. The original communal committees were becoming mere rubber-stampers for the power elite that had emerged under Lenin and would be solidified under Stalin. Was this equality? Was this the flowering of the individual’s gifts and talents that had been so romantically proposed by the earlier party?” While Zamyatin does not directly criticize the nascent Soviet State, its censors recognized its implication. While it was published in English in 1924, it would not be published in the Soviet Union until 1988. His writing style is a bit confusing at times, but the imagery he created and how accurately it foretold where his country was going (albeit in extrapolated form) was brilliant. Along the way he fuses elements of Christian allegory and mathematics, elements I liked. Most of all, though, in creating the extreme of this authoritarian regime, he asks questions about the individual’s role relative to the state, or collective. Like Jack London in The Iron Heel and Orwell in 1984, he understood the mechanics of power, and the lengths to which those in power will go to preserve it. It’s a dark and chilling read to say the least. This edition is blessed with the aforementioned introduction from Margaret Atwood, George Orwell’s 1946 review of the book, and Ursula Le Guin’s stunning article “The Stalin in the Soul” subtitled “Sketch for a Science Fiction Novel,” with the latter really standing out. Written over 1973-77 when the communists were in power in the Soviet Union, Le Guin comments on a different form of censorship in the West, that of the market, and how writers and artists bend to its will. “We are not a totalitarian state,” she writes, “we continue to be a democracy in more than name – but a capitalist, corporate democracy.” Of art she says “Unless it is something familiar rewarmed, or something experimental in form but clearly trivial or cynical in content, it is unsafe. It must be safe. It mustn’t hurt the consumers. It mustn’t change the consumers.” She further adds that as opposed to America, Russians “do believe in art, in the power of art to change the minds of men.” It’s a brilliant read, and I highly recommend getting an edition with this article.More quotes:On American optimism, this also from Le Guin’s article:“The recent fantasy bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a serious book, unmistakably sincere. It is also intellectually, ethically, and emotionally trivial. The author has not thought things through. He is pushing one of the beautifully packaged Instant Answers we specialize in this country. He says that if you think you can fly very fast, why, then you can fly very fast. And if you smile, all is well. All the world is well. When you smile, you just know that that man dying of gangrene in Cambodia and that starving four-year-old in Bangladesh and the woman next door with cancer will feel ever so much better, and they’ll smile too. This wishful thinking, this callous refusal to admit the existence of pain, defeat, and death, is not only typical of successful American writing, but also of Soviet writers who “succeeded” where a Zamyatin “failed” – the Stalin Prize winners, with their horrible optimism. Once you stop asking questions, once you let Stalin into your soul, you can only smile, and smile, and smile.”On Christianity:“And the merciful Christian God himself, who slowly roasted all who disobeyed Him in the flames of Hell – isn’t he an executioner, too? And what was greater: the number of Christians who were burned, or the number of people that Christians burned when their turn came? And yet – remember this: nevertheless, for centuries, the Christian God was glorified as the God of Love.”On freedom and happiness:“The man and woman in paradise were given a choice: they could either have happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness – there was no third option. Those blockheads chose freedom – and can you blame them? - but ended up spending the consequent centuries dreaming of shackles. Shackles – yes, shackles – that’s what all their ‘world sorrow’ was really about. And it went on like that for centuries! It wasn’t until we came along that humanity finally figured out how to return to our state of grace…”On individual rights:“Even among the Ancients, the more adult ones knew that the wellspring of rights is power – that rights are a function of power. So, on two sides of the scale, we have: a gram and a ton, “I” on one, and “We,” the One State, on the other. Isn’t it already clear? The presumption that “I” can have any “rights” with respect to the State is exactly like thinking a gram can equal a ton. From this, we have our regular distribution: the ton gets power and the gram gets duties. And the most natural path from obscurity to greatness: forget you’re a gram and feel the power of being one-millionth of a ton…”And:“In the ancient world, the Christians understood this, our only (though very imperfect) predecessors. They knew that humility is a virtue and pride, a sin. That WE comes from God, and I – from the devil.”On revolutions, dangerous thoughts in the Soviet Union of 1920:“There is no final revolution. Revolutions are infinite. Finality is for children: children are scared of infinity and ’t's very important that children can sleep at night…”

I never heard of it before. Reading it felt like what I imagine reading Neuromancer must be like to a cyberpunk fan who's read 100s of modern cyberpunk novels.

This is the dystopian novel that inspired Brave New World, Animal Farm, and 1984. This is a book about communism run rampart, where everything is dictated by numbers, even names of people.The world of the One State is ingeniously written, instead of Human Instinct being suppressed, it re-directs its citizens to hate those that the state hates, love what the state loves. It even manages to have poetry that is about the perfection of math. As a result, strong attachment towards others is to be a sickness.The story is written through a diary/journal type. Each day, entry. The Builder (D-503, everyone is a number in this world) of the ship Integral, whose mission is to travel to alien planets and convert those they find to the perfectness that is the One State, is targeted by I-330. She does this slowly, igniting human passions that are unknown by the builder.The book was written in 1920 - but feels modern. Women and men do different work, D-503 is disgusted with his neighbor who has "negroid" lips. But, for the most part, the society is equal - in that full transparency (both figuratively and literally). I'd have like to know more about the top of this world-is there an actual builder at the top, but we know what the Builder knows, and he, and his fellow citizens, are kept in the dark about how decisions are made.

Overall an interesting book. Unfortunately it didn't hold my attention very well and I'm sure that's just due to the plot. It was very well written, but maybe the way this dystopian society was so confirmed and VERY based on mathematical algorithms just didn't work for me. I like my dystopia's a little gritty and this was sterile to me.

We, written by Yevgeny Zamyatin and translated by Bela Shayevich, is a classic of dystopian literature yet also one that is still sometimes overlooked. I first encountered it in a Dystopian Literature course in the early 90s and it was the only work in the class that I had not at least heard of if not read. And, sadly, I was not in the minority.I found the translation here to be very good. I don't know Russian so I can't speak to that aspect, but I think Shayevich captured the flow and tone of the work as well as any translation I've read, and better than at least one of them. If you haven't read this novel, this is a good edition to grab. If you have read it and want to revisit it, this edition should please you.The novel itself aside, I found the additional pieces by Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, and Ursula K Le Guin make the work well worth adding to your library even if you have another edition. In particular, Le Guin's essay is excellent as a standalone essay, touching on several important topics as they relate to this novel.While the novel spoke to a very specific place and time, it still reverberates for today's reader. Likewise Le Guin's essay, written in the early 70s, could easily have been written for today's world. The essay is in one of her books if you want to read more of her nonfiction work.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

This book was written between 1920 and 1921 but not published until 1924 – in English. The USSR authorities may have seen it as a commentary on themselves. I wonder why. To be fair, it’s hardly subtle. But this is the 1920s, and science fiction didn’t do subtle in those days. The idea of a unifying state state can hardly be said to be Zamyatin’s invention – insects beat him to it, for one thing – but certainly We influenced a number of later works, and even arguably created an entire subgenre. The problem with said subgenre, however, is that it magnifies the fears and sensibilities of the writer, without actually making any kind of cohesive argument either for or against the society described in the book. David Karp’s One is a good example: most Americans will read it as a dystopia, most Europeans with read it as a utopia. We‘s United State is a state regimented to the nth degree, to such an extent the plot is pretty much narrator D-503 discovering he has a “soul” and the changes in perspective and sensibility that wreaks on him. It’s triggered by his relationship with a woman who clearly is not a typical state drone, and even on occasion dresses up in “old-fashioned” clothing like dresses. Unfortunately, the book is all a bit over-wrought, with excessive use of ellipses, and references to “ancient times” that are clearly the time of writing, as if there were no history between the novel’s present and the 1920s. I can see how it’s a seminal and influential work, but it’s not an enjoyable read and I’d sooner stick to works without such fevered prose. Most certainly an historical document, and important in that respect, but don’t read it for pleasure.

Great story. I love the keywords for each record, and I smiled at all of the the running mathematical analogies (especially D's fear of and trepidation at the "irrational root").

I was surprised at how much the story made me think of other stories, despite knowing before reading it that it has influenced a number of better known tales. The world of "We" is incredibly well constructed, and there are a number of jarring juxtapositions: the writing of a semi-surreptitious journal among the panopticon beehive that leaves almost no privacy; the sexual belonging of one's body to everyone except, apparently, one's self; the assignment of titles like Benefactor and Builder in a society that supposedly shuns class division and individual distinction; even the pacing of the story, from D's initial rational pursuit of his thoughts to the rapid and sometimes scattered, even fragmentary, narrative near the end.

The story is a bit confusing at times. I had to re-read the incidents aboard the Integral, and I'm still not entirely clear what happened, though I think I got enough to understand how the ending plays out.

I was pleasantly surprised; all I really knew was that this was a dystopian novel that criticized the USSR (a mode that has grown more than a bit tiresome), and inspired 1984. Now, Orwell is a good writer, but his novels don't really bring out his best qualities; Zamyatin, however, is an excellent writer, and/or Clarence Brown is a wonderful translator. The ideas here are tedious at best (we should all embrace disorder and chaos!!!!), but as a work of literature, it's really solid: a nice plot, as well as very smart use of ellipsis, understatement, and irony. There's none of the technophilia or over description that (now) characterizes SF writing. Brown's introduction points out some of the cringeworthy scenes that really do feel like early SF at its worst; he doesn't point out this book's superiority over later work. That's a shame.

Mostly, though, I couldn't help but wonder if it was possible to write a dystopia that did involved neither state oppression nor environmental/military devastation. 'Idiocracy' might have come close, but can one do it seriously? Because I'm much less worried about the state and the bomb than I am about individual idiots making idiotic individual choices that are 'free' but also destructive.

Zamyatin may have cleared way for other Dystopian novels, such as Brave New World and 1984... but criticizing Communism was not his only target; he was an equal opportunity satirist, taking aim at the "backwardness" of the provincial and the religious.

The concept of "We" is based on the idea that "..if man's freedom is nil, he commits no crimes."
Zamyatin takes this to an imaginative, and visually expressive conclusion.

Lots of interesting ideas. I like the idea of perfecting certain types of motions. It can be said to be both utopian and dystopian at the same time. Your utopia might be my dystopia. There is no final revolution, there is no perfect happiness. It's not a death sentence. It's a temporary setback. Fits in well with modern literature. Can't quite avoid the black and white notions that science fiction brings.

Challenging. The books cited as drawing from this work are significantly more accessible, which is probably why I am just getting around to reading We now.

The dystopic novel to bring them all together in darkness and bind them.This is an extraordinary work. predating Brave New World and 1984, by decades & describing accurately describing near-earth spaceflight from 1920s Russia!If you only want to read one of these works, I would start with this one. So happy The Folio Society shared it with us!

I think the main significance of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is the fact that it was published before either Brave New World or Nineteen Eighty-Four and obviously influenced the authors of both those books. In this imagined world of the 26th century it is held that happiness and freedom are incompatible. This is a future where life is dictated by math, logic and rules. Imagination, emotion and dreams are frowned upon.Under constant surveillance, the people’s lives are tightly controlled. There is no individuality allowed. They exercise by marching to the state’s anthem, they live in glass houses where they can be observed at all times. There is no marriage and children are created in a lab and raised by the state. Sex is rationed and one can only draw the curtains in their home while engaging in this activity. While I found this all very interesting, I did not connect with the main character or become particularly engaged by the story.Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote this dystopian novel during a time of change in Russia, he had just come through a revolution and a new system was taking control. He, personally had run afoul of both the white Russians and later, the Communists. We takes a hard look at totalitarian government and the flaws of forcing people into a rigid way of living.

A millennia ago One State conquered the world, now they have designs on the rest of the Universe. They are building a spaceship called Integral and the chief engineer, D-503, is writing a journal that he is intending on taking with him on its maiden journey. Even in his privileged position he has to live in a glass apartment so he is constantly visible to the Bureau of Guardians, better known as One State’s secret police. He only has a moment of privacy when his state appointed lover, O-90, is permitted to visit him on certain nights. O-90 has other lovers, including the best friend of D-503, R-13 who performs as a One State sanctioned poet at public executions.

Then one day, the safe predictable world that D-503 has known, changes in ways that he could never have conceived, and nothing can ever be the same again.

I couldn’t quite get on with this for a few reasons. The plot didn’t really move that fast, even though it is a short tome, and the characters feel as flat and two dimensional as the glass walls that they are continually viewed through. I can see where Orwell and Huxley got their inspiration from though as this is brutally chilling at times with the all-pervasive state intrusion and levels of control that are frankly terrifying. Not bad, but for me didn’t have that extra something that 1984 has. 2.5 stars

A Book With A One-Word TitleThose who have read 1984 will find Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian novel We familiar, although it is actually precedes both. Like 1984, it takes place in a totalitarian regime, the One State, that suppresses individuality, brutally if necessary, in favor of an ordered life controlled by scientific dictates. People no longer have names; they have alpha-numeric representations and are known as numbers. Life in the One State has been reduced to a schedule all numbers follow, the Table of Hours, which determines the proper time for all activity: eating, sleeping, sex - even the two hours of free time required due to an inability to solve the problem of happiness. The One State is headed by a Big Brother-like Benefactor, an all-powerful man who personally executes non-conformists.D-503, the narrator, is the lead builder of the Integral, a rocket ship destined for other inhabited planets whose populations lag behind the One State in their evolution toward reasoned life. He sets out to document what he sees and thinks leading up to the launch as an ode to the One State, but ends up documenting the challenges all totalitarian states face in subordinating individual will to the collective good. At its core, his journal is an unwitting jeremiad against uniformity, against suppression of man's natural desires and needs.As with other science fiction I've read (see my review of Ender's Game, for example), We is a book more concerned with philosophical ideas than character development and language. While there are brilliant expositions on human nature, such as the reduction of happiness to the formula bliss divided by envy, and unfreedom being man's natural desire, these are overshadowed by the writing style. D-503 continually breaks off mid-thought, leaving the reader to interpret, or more often anticipate, the meaning of his ellipses. His descriptions of action are often confusing and it's unclear whether he is describing actual or imaginary events. There are also too many coincidental occurrences where he encounters, in a city of millions, the exact character needed to advance the plot, whether that is O-90, the woman who loves him, I-330, his femme fatale, or several others who represent competing sides in the One State's battle for control.We is not necessarily a complex story, although it contains multiple Biblical references that can be outside mainstream knowledge. There is also a shadow organization, MEPHI, which I associated with Mephistopheles, the Devil's advocate in Faust (although this may just be my mistaken interpretation). I think you should read any introductory material first (something I usually forgo to avoid spoilers or being prejudiced by a summary of the story). My copy had an excellent introduction that focused on Zamyatin's experiences in post-Revolution Russia which provided an illumination on the factors influencing the novel.

Yay, dystopian scifi! I borrowed this from Adam. Interesting to read a first-person view of a dystopia where the narrator seems to genuinely believe it's a dystopia. I liked this a lot, especially the last few chapters where the narrator starts to realise how badly he's misjudged I-330. On the other hand, I wish he didn't constantly mention the fact that his one friend had "African teeth" literally every time he showed up. What does that even mean?

I was reading this book in the same course as I was reading "Brave New World." "Brave New World" did not hold my attention enough to read it fully. "We" did."We" is the narrator's letter of praise for his enlightened society, to be sent as cargo with a newly invented space craft to the other civilizations of the universe where the society intends to spread. Part of my preference for "We" over "Brave New World" was the dated feel of "Brave New World," and how We felt that much more estranged from society. As a dystopian novel "We" struck me as being both alien and sinister. The new ideal society feels like such an affront to our current ideas of freedom, and to hear it spoken of as such a grand and wonderful system by the narrator, coupled with knowledge that the narrator's intention is to bring this society to us. That there is no real "out" in this society as there was in "Brave New World" makes it hit that much harder.