the firefly express

I just finished an excellent book! It's called We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I found it on Peter's couch, was intrigued by the nice cover design, and the quote on the front, "The best single work of science fiction yet written." I was suprised to find it extremely awesome.

Science fiction, like theater, has a bad reputation, because there is so much of it, and so much of it is god-awful and embarassing. But this one was pretty darn solid, and much of that stems from the fact that it was one of the first. Written in the 1920's, it contains the familiar plot elements of Logan's Run, A Clockwork Orange, and Brazil, but is so earnest and unapologetic that you forget you've heard this story a million times.

I read it in a day, and you can too, thanks to the gorgeous new translation by Natasha Randall.

I recommend this to anyone who's claimed to enjoy the dystopian classics 1984 and Brave New World, but secretly found them boring.