We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

“There’s a good reason why mathematicians don’t often keep journals”

We is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance.

I read “We” after 1984 and afterwards I thought, “Did Orwell just steal the entire plot from this Russian dude?” The book itself was challenging to read because it’s in the form of a journal kept by a mathematician. His thoughts are scattered and he’s very logical about the way he presents things, which is interesting, but also a bit convoluted in parts of the story. It was an enjoyable book, and I really liked that Zamyatin incorporated the design ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, a mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency.