Happy birthday, Yevgeny Zamyatin!

Feb. 1st, 2016 at 8:13 AM

Happy birthday to the father of modern dystopian fiction, Yevgeny Zamyatin (1 February, 1884 – 10 March, 1937)!

“It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some that bloom once in a thousand, in ten thousand years? Perhaps we never know about them simply because this 'once in a thousand years' has come today.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (1924)

Happy birthday also to

time_shark, and happy early birthday to

alitalf,

mayree,

infostudent,

akaihyo,

vonjunzt,

wiredwizard,

moglaikhan,

griffith_gwyn,

mr_earbrass,

mollypunkin,

cookiefleck,

firiath,

nihilistic_kid,

alicia_stardust,

ankh_hpl,

dqg_neal,

xerum525,

homespunheart,

jagash,

settiai,

rosamundeb, and

kalquessa. May you enjoy many happy returns of the day, my friends!

Comments

( 7 comments — Leave a comment )

sittingduck1313

Feb. 1st, 2016 01:54 pm (UTC)

I came across this interesting little thought regarding trends in dystopian fiction. Older stories like 1984, Brazil, Soylent Green et al present their dark futures as something irreversible, with the message of, "Don't let this happen!" More modern dystopian works frequently end with the antagonistic regime being overthrown, with the (possibly unintended) message being, "Don't worry about this coming about. Let you descendants deal with it."

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