Re: (ReacTor) SFF Works About Creating, Revising, & Obfuscating History

On 9/25/24 1:55 AM, The Horny Goat wrote:

On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 17:11:18 -0400, Tony Nance <tnusenet17@gmail.com>
wrote:
 

On 9/24/24 12:20 PM, Cryptoengineer wrote:

On 9/24/2024 11:44 AM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:

On 24/09/2024 09.07, James Nicoll wrote:

Five SFF Works About Creating, Revising, and Obfuscating History
>
Each of these works explores attempts at controlling the past, and
rewriting history...
>
https://reactormag.com/five-sff-works-about-creating-revising-and-
obfuscating-history/

>
"We have always been at war with Eastasia."

>
Yeah, that's the obvious missing example.

>
Only sort of missing - the first sentence quote[1] in the article comes
from 1984.
>
Tony
[1] "who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present
controls the past"

 Anybody here NOT know that?
 

Actually, I only strongly suspected it, and had to look it up to confirm.
Sometimes when James doesn't spend one of his slots on an obvious choice, he'll (sometimes obliquely) mention the obvious one. Seeing that quote in his first sentence made me think "I bet that's from the obvious choice that isn't listed below."
If I saw that quote without any context, I would have thought "that's familiar-sounding, but is it a pastiche/homage/derivation, or is it from a well-known original?"

(Hint: I first read Nineteen Eighty-Four in high schoo which I suspect
is before some of the younger people reading this were born. Let's
just say I was young enough to consider some of Winston's + Julia's
encounters "hot")

The one-and-only time I read it was also in high school. I'll never re-read it, but it gets referenced so often that I'm positive my knowledge and understanding of it has grown and will continue to do so.
Tony