#13: Airstrip One, Oceania — Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Orwell published this in 1949 and set it in a version of London under total surveillance, where history is continuously rewritten to match current political requirements and the primary instrument of social control is organized hatred directed at a permanent enemy whose identity changes without acknowledgment. Thought itself is monitored through the language, which has been systematically reduced to eliminate the vocabulary required for dissent. Winston Smith’s final capitulation is the book’s most honest and most devastating moment.
