We

Yevgeny Zemyatin's little-known dystopian novel We influenced Ayn Rand, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley, and unlike them, he had no model. Zamyatin wrote We in 1921. The Benefactor, the one ruler, assigns numbers to citizens. Society uses pure mathematics as a religion. So the novel has the influence of the Logical Positivism of the day. The novel refers to groups and individuals as "ciphers" or "unifs."

The novel is a series of journal entries by engineer I-503. He hopes it will reach people of the future and that they can learn from it. I-503 is building a spaceship called The Integral.

Days are heavily regimented in Zemyatin's dystopian novel, We. The Benefactor permits an hour of personal time. The Benefactor arranges or permits personal intimacy time, as well. Everyone lives in glass houses and cameras are everywhere. However, no one has televisions.

About Zamyatin

Zamyatin found himself in jail twice, once as a Bolshevik for hiding explosives in his flat. The Soviets send him into exile after serving his time. After a few years, he returned to Russia in disguise, settled in a small provincial town, and began writing fiction. A piece of his called "At the World's End" brought him some fame again. It also landed him again in hot water.