WE.

I've just finished reading "We" by Zamyatin, one of the books I bought with those vouchers. What a book! And what an influence it had on 1984, every few pages you think "you nicked that too, Orwell!" but that doesn't take anything away from that amazing book. Here's just two bits I enjoyed:

"Name me the final number, the highest, the greatest."
"But that's absurd! If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number?"
"Then how can you speak of a final revolution? There is no final one. Revolutions are infinite...
[but if this was the final revolution, then what]?"
"Then nothing, finished! All through the universe, evenly spread, everywhere..."
"Aha...evenly, everywhere! That is precisely what we're talking about-entropy, psychological entropy. Surely you see that only differences, differences of temperature, only contrasts in degrees of heat, only that makes for life? And if throughout the universe all bodies are equally warm, or equally cool...You've got to smash them into each other-so there'll be fire, explosion,inferno. And we-we're going to smash them."


Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am man: hence... No, this is not what I mean. I know that you know this. I am asking: have you ever really believed it; believed it totally, not with your mind, but with your body; have you ever felt that one day the fingers holding this very page will be icy, yellow...No of course you don't believe it-which is the reason why, up to now, you haven't jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement, why you've gone on eating, turning pages, shaving, smiling, writing...