“A heretical thought… should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.” How on earth did Orwell come up with something like this? I’ve been curious about 1984 because every time people talk about some of my favorite authors — like Project Itoh and Margaret Atwood — this book always comes up as one of their inspirations. Now I get it. It’s easy to see how this book has influenced so many other works of art. Even in his time, the ideas must have felt groundbreaking — and even now, they still feel wild and relevant. What’s truly terrifying is that the more time passes since Orwell wrote this, the more real the story feels. A mass surveillance society no longer sounds like pure fiction.