"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin is a milestone book in the literature of the fantastic, a dystopian novel of particular literary value, which has had a deep influence on later writers, such as George Orwell, Ursula K. Le Guin, Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, and others, while also inspiring creators in film, theater, and comics.
It is considered one of the first novels of modern science fiction, a masterpiece of fictional modernism that contributed greatly to the definition and evolution of the genre. We find ourselves in the distant future. The all-powerful One State and the Benefactor govern the world based on strict mathematical logic, turning life into a perfectly balanced equation and happiness into a scientifically calculated quantity.
People have been transformed into numbers, living in a transparent reality where everything is made of glass. D-503 is the constructor of the Integral, the spacecraft that will carry the beneficial yoke of logic to other unknown beings, who possibly still live in a strange condition called Freedom.
This book is the constructor's notes, which will travel to new worlds to praise the virtues and glory of the One State. However, D-503 will meet the beautiful I-330 and things will take an unexpected turn.
Zamyatin's novel, while maintaining its relevance, serves as an ironic satire on humanity's faith in the unlimited expansion of technology, a condemnation against all totalitarianism, an affirmation of freedom against whatever keeps humanity in chains, a cry of anguish for a new relationship between the Self and the We, between the individual and themselves and others.
