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Pacifica Radio's KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley, California, the first publicly-funded radio station in the USA (1949), will broadcast and stream George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four on Tuesday, June 27 from 6AM until 9PM PT (but will not have any actual content until 12:01AM Tuesday.)
The classic cover-to-cover reading [recorded in 1975] is by [longtime KPFA morning host and] blacklisted writer Charles Morgan and legendary voiceover artist June Foray [Rocket J. Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Nell Fenwick; Stan Freberg collaborator].
[...] KPFA is also heard on KPFB 89.3 FM in Berkeley, KFCF [...] 88.1 FM in Fresno, and 97.5 FM K248BR in Santa Cruz.
It will also be broadcast simultaneously on Pacifica stations WBAI in New York and WPFW in Washington DC (9AM ET to Midnight), KPFT in Houston, and KPFK in Los Angeles, as well as many Pacifica affiliates. (Another streaming link on that page.)
For those who are impatient or otherwise-occupied on that day, the 13 one-hour segments of the audiobook (not 10 installments, as some sources indicate) are available as CDs. Caveat: $18 each.
This is one of many offerings of the Pacifica Radio Archives, sometimes known as From the Vaults. The project is transferring decades of programming recorded on reel-to-reel tape to digital format before those available-nowhere-else recordings degrade to nothingness. The project is funded by sales of CDs of their efforts and a yearly 1-day network-wide drive.
A source says they also have this on 13 pages at Soundcloud (Javascript required). That source also notes that the "audiobook" undersells the dramatic audio presentation a bit.
Depending on how ridiculous the length of copyright is where you are, you may also be able to legally download the text of the novel, gratis.
The University of Adelaide has a very nice HTML presentation, chapter-by-chapter. (My favorite chapter is Part Two, Chapter IX, where Emmanuel Goldstein's "The Book" describes the purpose of perpetual war (Oligarchy; Fascism). Scroll down to "Chapter III" for the good stuff. This is in Part 8 of Pacifica's recordings.)
Project Gutenberg, Canada will give you the whole book in one gulp (HTML format; 597kB).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 24 2017, @01:40PM (4 children)
The clipper chip era had me worried about the 'trust' of computer systems, but the level of ubiquitous surveillance that 1984 depicted seemed farfetched (everything ELSE about the novel seemed believable, especially after East Germany, American attitudes during the Cold War, etc.
Social networking was the first red flag. After 10-20 years of most people only getting online via handles (thanks in large part to the 8 character username limits of those early systems, leading to almost everyone having a handle instead of their real name posted.) Then came cell phones and the selfie and I had some hope that people would come to their senses after all this personal information they posted came home to roost. Now ~10 years after THAT blew up with people having all that personal information used against them by hiring managers, marketers, etc, I have no hope that humanity will grow up and do better, and from that I realize the true brilliance of works such as 1984, which presciently fortold just how stupid humans collectively are, and how given enough time and the right human resources, any revolution, whether of the mind, or body, can be quashed, rendering free thinkers impotent in their quest to elicit change. Because in the end people collectively don't want change, they want authorities to tell them how to live life.
As a P.S. Somebody should get DNA from June Foray, according to her wikipedia page she never had kids, but she was hot up to at least her 40s, and has lived to be at least 99, being a voice actor for over 80 years! Somebody needs to clone that shit for future generations so that her genes will go on to have the descendants she never had :(
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday June 24 2017, @02:26PM (2 children)
I think even Orwell wasn't expecting that people would voluntarily put spying technology like telescreens (i.e. TVs with integrated camera and microphone) into their homes. In his novel, while IIRC not explicitly said, it was basically mandatory that you had one. Not having one would have made you suspicious. But in our world, nobody is forced to buy it, yet there are enough people who do.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 24 2017, @02:38PM
It is worth remembering that in 1984, the common people simply didn't give a shit about the government. Government was obsessed with controlling those with intelligence and education, and even more obsessed with controlling those who might have any kind of influence. But, the common people? They just didn't care about government, and government cared very little about them.
That's pretty much what we see in real life today. You have to earn a flag, in one way or another, before government takes an interest in you. And, most of the Facefook crowd has pretty close to zero interest in government. They are mostly led by nose rings, and fed the proper diet of propaganda, and they remain meaningless in the grand scheme of things. They are left along to fornicate, get intoxicated, and act stupid, in whatever manner and whatever order they wish, until they earn a flag. "Interesting person, possible terrorist relations" or some such silly crap.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday June 24 2017, @08:57PM
It seems like at least in Britain, he had it on the nose about ubiquitous acceptance of surveillance [satwcomic.com] and providing access to your private information. Just don't mess with the chocolate rations [theregister.co.uk].
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @02:58AM
Everyone focuses on the mass surveillance of society in that book. They usually miss a couple of other big things. Such as re-editing of language to be more PC. The surveillance was part of it to enforce the re-writing of history to re-fit the narative big brother wanted.