Cautious Avoid: Airstrip One, Oceania (1984, George Orwell)

It’s hard to believe that any oppressive regime could be worse than the one currently collecting surveillance reports about you, but in this case it might be true. This is the Big Brother of the whole genre, the dystopian enthusiast’s classic dystopia. In Orwell’s world, you are probably already in a totalitarian nightmare wherever you are, except in a part of the world where you could be casually mass-murdered just to make a point. We’re not so concerned about your ability to handle this conceptually: doublethink or newspeak or hate-minutes or huge personal betrayals are nothing new for you, you’ve been juggling multiple realities all your life. But why do you want to move to the evil empire’s nerve centre? But do consider: are people of your race or gender or sexuality likely to do well under Big Brother’s eye? And why would they possibly allow you to immigrate, unless there is a plan for you so sinister that you can’t even imagine it yet? Maybe we’re overthinking it, and there are just some jobs they have that their local elite find difficult, or boring. But we’ve spent some together now, and we like you, so… don’t do it. Nope nope nope.

However bad things are, no place is a dystopia if you live in it: not if you keep hope alive. Any society can look like a dystopia from far enough away, but we’re confident that if you lived there, you might just think of it as home, and find hope in the people in it with you, or yourself, or the ideas and stories you carry inside you. That you even have the energy to read this advisory indicates there’s still embers of hope left within you: that you haven’t been distracted or manipulated or surveilled into submission. What dystopia could really scare someone who even has the fortitude to contemplate the bureaucratic nightmare of an immigration process? Take it from us: wherever you go, wherever you stay, you’re going to be all right.

The City Inside by Samit Basu is available now from TorDotCom.

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