LETTER: Questions Reference to "1984"

You should change the reference to 1984. The whole book is about the state's dictating what to think and punishing those unwilling to suspend reason and memory to tow the official line.

Editor's response: But even in George Orwell's 1984 where the population was barraged by propaganda and falsehoods, the state was monitoring what people were saying and doing, not what they were thinking. Hence our mention of progression from crimes against others, to victimless crimes, to crimes of speech, to the post-Orwellian crime of what one fantasizes.

Perhaps a future generation will insert brain probes that will monitor thought and, by electrical impulses, discourage what Big Brother does not desire. This may only be a couple of generations away.