2024: A Graphic Novel (Hardcover)

by Ted Rall (Author) "IT WAS A BRIGHT HOT DAY IN APRIL, AND THE BATTERED TEXAS INSTRUMENT WATCH ON WINSTON'S WRIST, PURCHASED IN A MOMENT OF IRONIC CONSUMERISM AT..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Combining the most depressing aspects of Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, Ted Rall's 2024 shows us where turn-of-the-century corporate America is heading if we don't collectively wake up. Yet, like most of Rall's work, it's not a downer. Even when the reader sees a not-so-twisted reflection of his or her own life in Winston and Julia's horrifying misadventures in neopostmodern "Canamexicusa," it's usually more of a belly laugh than a gut punch. Tearing away at the shrouds of irony that keep us from experiencing our lives more directly for all their faults, Rall captures the essence of our reactions to soft oppression by having his characters repeat the mantra "Yes. No. Whatever." If the best criticism is satire, then 2024 is as good as it gets. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
Executed in his familiar black and white blockish graphics, Rall's latest (Search and Destroy; My War with Brian) takes place in a future where blind consumerism has rendered history and human consciousness irrelevant. 2024 is meant to be a sly, 1984-inflected commentary on the shallowness of our times, but it never quite manages to measure up to its formidable literary model. In Rall's vision of the future, Web TV is omnipresent, and the economy is run by megacorporations that exploit ethnic tensions in trade wars. As in 1984, the protagonists are named Winston and Julia, and share a fickle dissatisfaction with the corporate system that dictates and monitors their lives. They live in a world where news and history are easily revised digitally, and shopping and pornography substitute for social interaction and passion. It's a "future where the past doesn't matter and no one cares" and where the key to life, says Winston, is to "keep yourself entertained, stave off boredom... hope for a way out before you come up for euthanasia." Rall's view of the future's social contract is a razor-sharp, irony-saturated parody of today's pop culture/consumerist consciousness. But his bleak lampoon of the mindless consumer state requires a lot of exposition, and, at times, his bold-faced text boxes threaten to visually overwhelm the exploits of his characters. Indeed, the characters sometimes function more as talking points than as protagonists. Even his updates of Orwellian doublespeak ("Assumptions Permit Imagination," etc.) are used to poor effect, with frequent, text-laden shifts of events undercutting the work's narrative logic. Undeniably smart and witty, the book can also be a bit awkward and disjointed.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing; illustrated edition edition (May 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561632791
• ISBN-13: 978-1561632794
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,011,182 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quick and Depressing, February 11, 2004

By	Munawar Ali (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I dont' care what the other reviewers claim, this comic is depressing. I can't drink my starbucks coffee the same way anymore. :) Rall does his thing, were he keeps nailing shocking concepts into your head. You'd be reeling from the last page, before he hits you again with something else just as shocking.

Overall a quick and very enjoyable book. If you take out the 1984 satire stuff, the book is funny, intriguing, insightful, and downright scary. It left me a couple of nights thinking about how screwed up Western Society really is. Buy it!

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read 1984 first, January 25, 2003

By	Patrick Hanks "me" (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: 2024 (Paperback)

This graphic novel is basically just a satire of "1984". The storyline is kind of erratic, but if you have read "1984" you will completely understand what is going on. "2024" is a humorous prediction from Ted Rall on what the future will be like. Instead of Big Brother watching, it is us who are watching each other, and it is scary look at what the future will be like. Of course since it is Ted Rall, this sad look at the future of society is completely hilarious. If you've read "1984" and are a fan of Ted Rall or just curious, then by all means purchase this book. The only downfall of this book is that it is sort of short but it is still a funny read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Full Stars of Insight into Orwell and Our Times, October 11, 2005

By	Michael J. Mcgrath (Madison, WI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This outstanding book brings out a forgotten side of the Orwellian nightmare, that is how it is not so much state terror or surveillance that gives us irrational and vicious governments as the unthinking and narrow time horizon of the captives. At bottom the citizens of idiotic systems allow the rulers to rule.

The Orwellian slogans of this book are ASSUMPTIONS PERMIT IMAGINATION, KNOWLEDGE IS IMPOSSIBLE, and EXPLOITATION IS BENEVOLENCE. These mind-killing notions all flow from Orwell's notion that "2+2=4. Once that is granted all else must follow", meaning that liberty and good living depend upon an honest and general commitment to reality. Rall then has the guts to point to the biggest threat of totalitarianism in the world today: POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY. Rall playfully calls it "Neo-post-modernism", and then shows in serious detail how it can rob working stiffs of certainty, language, and purpose. With foundations of knowledge cut out from underneath us, we are all ripe for media manipulation by unscrupulous leaders.

Rall out-Orwells Orwell by cutting out reference to physical police state torture and "tortures" the protagonist Winston through non-thrilling entertainment. In short this is a perfect rendition of the vain, stupid dot.com corporate culture of our upper middle class and mass media. It is smart people without knowledge, culture without content, money without wealth or productivity, a libertine lifestyle without freedom, and directed, meaningless passions.