Nineteen Eighty-Four and opera. The effect of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on the English language is extensive; the concepts of Big Brother, Room 101, the Thought Police, thoughtcrime, unperson, memory hole (oblivion), doublethink (simultaneously holding and believing contradictory beliefs) and Newspeak (ideological language) have become common phrases for denoting totalitarian authority. Doublespeak and groupthink are both deliberate elaborations of "doublethink", and the adjective "Orwellian" means similar to Orwell's writings, especially "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The practice of ending words with (such as "mediaspeak") is drawn from the novel. Orwell is perpetually associated with 1984; in July 1984, an asteroid was discovered by Antonín Mrkos and named
George Orwell living conditions of the poor in northern England, and class division generally) and "Homage to Catalonia". According to Irving Howe, Orwell was "the best English essayist since Hazlitt, perhaps since Dr Johnson." Modern readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The former is often thought to reflect degeneration in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism; the latter, life under totalitarian rule. "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is often compared to "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley; both are powerful dystopian novels warning of