The year 1984 has come and gona, but George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 194 is still the great modern classic of negative utopia- a startlingly world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. no one can deny the novel's hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admitions- a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.