We (Modern Library Classics) Paperback – July 11, 2006

Today we can find dystopia books by the dozen, but not so in 1921 when this book was written. As the foreword by Bruce Sterling in the version I read says: "We is one of the first attempts to write about the future through the consciousness of someone born there and living there."

We follows a series of "records" written by D-503, a mathematician and engineer that has created a spacecraft known as Integral, that will be used to convert different planets in the solar system to the One State, a logical dystopia were emotions and individuality are suppressed and cold logic is used to reinforce the laws and keep the population subservient. To dream or "have a soul" are literally considered diseases.

D-503 soon falls in love with a renegade called I-330, a free spirit that seems immune to the lack of individuality of the rest of the One State population. This leads D-503 through a series of discoveries of a different kind of life outside the wall that circumvents the city of the One State, as well as the struggles of his logical mind to understand feelings like love.

It is fascinating that we have only the over-logical protagonist's perspective on the matter. D-503 describes the female forms in geometrical analogies and tries to solve his new feelings like equations ("It seems I no longer live in our rational world, but in an ancient, delirious—a world of square roots of minus one.").

Like Sterling also points out in the foreword, We is responsible for several tropes that have become common-place in sci fi and dystopia literature, like: "hermetically sealed cities, synthetic food, unisex suits, Metropolis-like crowds of drones marching through cyclopean apartment blocks, whizzing, roaring trips in giant spaceships, mind control through brain surgery."

The pacing may appear a bit dated for modern readers and the character a struggle to identify with, but We rewards the ones who keep on reading with a fascinating story that goes well beyond just it's importance in the history of sci fi literature.

i read this side-by-side the original translation as part of a seminar on the translation of Russian texts, and can say that Natasha Randall has done an excellent job! If you are at all worried about translation, this is the text to go with!

Zamyatin's genius is itself unquestionable, and puts the reductive and conformist narrative of Orwell to shame. I won't say more.

D-503 is having a pretty good life. It's the 26th Century and he has a great job as the Builder of the first space ship - the INTEGRAL - which will take the blessings of his enlightened government - the One State ruled by the Benefactor - to other planets. D lives in the final human city of 10 million, a soaring glass scape, where the cyphers - the citizens of the One State - spend their scheduled day working, walking, having scheduled sex time, taking an "aero" to ancient houses, and attending lectures on the benefits of living under the Benefactor.

The ancient problems of food and sex have been solved. Food is mass produced from petroleum, and sex is a simple matter of requisitioning another cypher for one's allotted sex time, when one finally draws the drapes on the glass apartment in which one lives. Nature is kept outside the city by the Green Wall, where there are - perhaps - less developed humans who survived the 200 Year War and do not have the benefits of the One State.

A satisfying life, indeed.

But then there's a girl - there's always a girl - I-330, and D-503 finds himself exposed to influences he's never experienced, and doing things he's never done. He dumps his regular sex schedule lover, the delightful pink and round O-90 (it seems that even in a world of nameless Cyphers, there is sex differentiation in names; women get vowels and men get consonants) - who just wants to have his baby - and finds himself flirting with a kind of underground that wants to hijack the INTEGRAL and go somewhere and live without the Benefactor. But perhaps the Benefactor knows about the plot - since people start acting strangely and voting "No" in the great Day of the One Vote against the continuance of the 48 year reign of the Benefactor.

And, then, the Benefactor announces that the One State has discovered a revolutionary technique whereby with three X-Ray blasts, the flaw of human imagination can be excised from the individual cypher.

And the Benefactor's police, the Guardians, begin to process cyphers through the operation....

I found We to be fascinating on three levels.

First, it is archaic science fiction, like Jack London's The Iron Heel and Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World. "We" was written in 1920 by Yevgeny Zamyatin in the middle of the Russian Civil War. His science fiction departure point is the far future, a long war, and the invention of synthetic food. For all that, the science in the science fiction is primitive at best.

What makes "We" interesting is that it is grand-daddy of dystopian science fiction. George Orwell read "We" and incorporated some of its elements, and its basic plot line, into "1984." But we is not a particularly dystopian dystopia. The One State seems to work. There appears to be a remarkable amount of free time and personal initiative for the Cyphers. They have friends, walk in the sun, have women who want their babies, visit ancient homes, have friends who are poets, listen to poetry about the goodness of the One State, and even have requited love affairs. You don't see the grinding oppression of many dystopias. Admittedly, I think it would be awful, but you have to wonder if someone who had lived through Tsarist autocracy and was watching millions of fellow citizens die in a Civil War wouldn't have thought that, maybe, there might be some good things about the One State and Rule by the Benefactor.

Second, it is an interesting insight into the era of early Communism. Again, Zamyatin was a Communist (or at least a fellow traveler) writing under the auspices of the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg during the Russian Civil War, and, yet, he wrote a novel about the extermination of humanity and human imagination by a single party dictatorship in the far future? How weird is that?

How insightful is that?

"We" suggests that while Zamyatin could see the material upside of a single party dictatorship - in terms of material progress, perhaps - it seems that he could also see the soul crushing inevitability that would follow from such a dictatorship, and that such a dictatorship would not only not fade away, but would seek new worlds to conquer.

One interesting historical note is that Zamyatin does not mention Marx or Lenin as the eminence grise behind the One State. That honor goes to American efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose efficiency studies were influential in Communist plans to create a worker's utopia by turning workers into efficient automatons. Thus, an American capitalist is the evil genius for the nightmare aspect of "We" as described in this passage:

//All of us (perhaps you, too), as children, read at school that greatest of all ancient literary legacies: The Railroad Schedule. But even if you put that next to the Table, you will see it is graphite next to diamond: in each is the same C, carbon, but how eternal, how transparent, how dazzling is the diamond. Who is not made breathless when racing and rumbling through the pages of the Schedule ? But the Table of Hours--it transforms each of us into the real-life, six-wheeled, steel heroes of a great epic. Each morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the exact same hour, at the exact same minute, we, the millions, rise as one. At the exact same hour, we uni-millionly start work and uni-millionly stop work. And, merged into a single, million-handed body, at the exact same Table-appointed second, we bring spoons to our lips, we go out for our walk and

Zamyatin, Yevgeny (2007-12-18). We (Modern Library Classics) (pp. 12-13). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

So, the technological "kick-off point" for "We" - and all science fiction needs some technology or scientific idea as its kick-off point of departure - is the railroad schedule applied to larger society!

Third, there is the book itself as literature. Undoubtedly, this is the weakest part of the book. "We" is hard to follow. There are coincidences that seem unlikely for a city of 10 million and things happen - or did they happen? - and are forgotten. The introduction to this volume by Bruce Sterling - which is a definite "value added" feature for this volume - notes:

//Nevertheless, We is a book that could only have come from Russia, or, rather, from the unique time and space that was revolutionary Petrograd. It's a science fiction novel set centuries in the future, but this story will spring to life if you can imagine it dressed in full, period regalia, with violently agitated Russian Constructivist costumes and a spacey, ethereal Theremin soundtrack.

Zamyatin, Yevgeny (2007-12-18). We (Modern Library Classics) . Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

My reading of "We" adopted that kind of imaginary narration with spacey, ethereal Theremin soundtrack in the background of my mind, and it seemed to work. I'm not sure that I would have enjoyed it as much if I had gone into "We" cold and expecting something more typical.

"We" is definitely a must-read for historians of Bolshevism or of early distopian science fiction. It also ought to be read by those who want to venture beyond the Hunger Games and back into the Ur-source of dystopian literature.

We is set in the future where D-503, the protagonist, lives in the One State. The One State is a nation constructed almost entirely of glass which makes it easier for the spies and/or secret police to keep watch over society. Also this glass city is separated from the Green Wall which is nature outside of the city. People in the One State believe people can only be happy when they have no free will. People in the society march in step and wear identical clothes and there is no way to refer to people other than by their given numbers. D-503 is the lead engineer on a project to build the Integral a spaceship which will bring their way of life to the rest of the solar system. D-503 has a friend, R-13, a state poet who writes poems in praise of the One State. D-503 meets a woman, I-330, who does not act like everyone else. She dresses mysteriously and says the oddest things. D-503 begins to dream of her and dreams are not normal in this society. He begins to become obsessed with I-330 and she tells him she is a member of the Mephi - a group plotting to bring down the One State. He is repelled and enthralled at the same time. He goes out of his way to see her and this begins to complicate his life and he goes to the doctor to get help.

You will have to read the book to see what all else happens but it is a brilliantly written book about totalitarian societies and how they can brainwash people in said society. It is an engaging and vivid book which I highly recommend.