C.S. Lewis also wrote an interesting review of 1984 and Animal Farm, claiming "Both are very bitter, honest and honorable recantations" of Orwell's earlier revolutionary beliefs. Interestingly, Lewis greatly preferred Animal Farm.
(That Hideous Strength is a hard book to appreciate, because it doesn't have a natural audience. It mixes dystopian transhumanist science fiction with religious parables, Arthurian legend and British academic politics.)
The nice thing about the Orwell review for me is that by explicitly talking about the atomic bomb and spelling it out for me in that context, it led me to an understanding of a lot of other cultural output (especially film) over the next few decades. Star Trek IV? Oh, that space probe that's out to destroy the world is a symbol for the atomic bomb. (I had some help from the boombox quip about how "we'll all be crispy critters after WORLD WAR III.") Blade Runner? Is about living with the expectation your life could end tomorrow. Aliens? Is about the destruction of civilization. And it's not just hardcore sci-fi. Why did the film adaptation of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH into The Secret of NIMH rewrite the end plot with that stupid mystical jewel-locket-thing? Besides the fact that it's more cinematic, perhaps the director was pondering the promise and perils of science, especially atomic weapons and atomic energy. Flippin' Rock-a-doodle? I'm thinking 'nuclear winter'.
You just don't get that same flavor with things produced after the mid-eighties.
Why did the film adaptation of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH into The Secret of NIMH rewrite the end plot with that stupid mystical jewel-locket-thing?
They pretty much rewrote the entire premise of the book. It was originally about lab rats who acquired human-level intelligence from experiments, and then had to rapidly build a civilization from scratch. Disnification turned it into some typical magical talking animal thing.
Disnification? Don Bluth wasn't at Disney at that point, so give credit where it's due. :)
Yeah, he rewrote the premise, and now it's about saving your family from imminent nuclear/tractor-related apocalypse with a lab-rat sideshow. Ironic, since this means Frisby is about the NIMH story while Secret of NIMH is about Mrs Frisby (/Brisby, per Frisbee Corp. lawsuit concerns).
A partial copy is here: http://books.google.com/books?id=V7YkpPwnFlUC&lpg=PA103&...
(That Hideous Strength is a hard book to appreciate, because it doesn't have a natural audience. It mixes dystopian transhumanist science fiction with religious parables, Arthurian legend and British academic politics.)