[What] are we to make of 1985, Burgess' melodramatization of "certain tendencies" of the present? In the prefatory and epilogue material (whose length—almost equal to that of the novella around which it clusters—is the only Shavian thing about it), Burgess argues, rather obviously, that Orwell's 1984 was not a prophecy of a plausible or probable future, but a vision of an ideally evil state, a demonic satire (Burgess calls it, rather willfully, a comic novel) modelled on the Britain of the 40's. Burgess' project is to isolate the seeds of a probable future in the Britain of the present, reveal their perniciousness, and dramatize their stifling over-growth seven years hence.

The pernicious seeds? There is violence and murder in the streets. The monuments and standards of the past are forgotten in favor of a perpetual present where quality and taste—in education, in food, in work, in entertainment...