Also... Orwell's writing was a lot more closely linked to stuff Orwell observed. He was a journalist and colonial by trade.
Huxley put more abstract ideas about humans and science into his world. Human engineering, happiness pills and genetic predispositions (like Douglas Adams' cow that wants to be eaten). This makes it feel more like a parable, a world that exists to play with ideas, like discworld.
Orwell's grim world was just a lot closer to stuff that existed, and still exists.
In a recent vice documentary about Assad's Syria, a policeman confesses "I am Winston Smith" after taking a journalist on a tour of Orwellian lies. It's not a coincidence, Assad's regime is built on ideas from Nazism and Stalinism, the regimes 1984 was parodying.
One of the members of the British upper class who inserted themselves into ruling positions in the colonies.
Orwell was born in Bihar, India. His father worked in the Opium Department of the civil service, overseeing its export to China. He grew up in the English "public" (upperclass) schools. At 19 he went to be a policeman in Burma.
Yes, in a formal ideological sense. The practicalities of running a state were Soviet/Stalinist in practice, both formally (the SU was an ally) and informally (look up hitchens talking about Stalinist influence on the baath policies, especially Saddam's famous purge.
Nazism also had some (mostly earlier) influence. Some was informal. Some is formal. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party is still quite influential (also to an extent in Lebanon). It's part of Assad's coalition and one of the parties allowed to formally exist in Syrian politics.
Huxley put more abstract ideas about humans and science into his world. Human engineering, happiness pills and genetic predispositions (like Douglas Adams' cow that wants to be eaten). This makes it feel more like a parable, a world that exists to play with ideas, like discworld.
Orwell's grim world was just a lot closer to stuff that existed, and still exists.
In a recent vice documentary about Assad's Syria, a policeman confesses "I am Winston Smith" after taking a journalist on a tour of Orwellian lies. It's not a coincidence, Assad's regime is built on ideas from Nazism and Stalinism, the regimes 1984 was parodying.