Chilling. Terrifying. All too real and all too possible. 
 This is the book to read if you want to see masterful world-building in action. The entire first third of the story is world-building. There's almost no dialogue, no action, no plot. It takes Orwell one-third of the page count just to set up his vision. 
 It's a world where everyone is monitored day and night. Actions are not a crime in this society; *thoughts* are criminal. 
 Winston is a member of the Outer Party (the government), and he is one of the people responsible for altering the past. One of the first examples we receive is the chocolate ration. A news report states the ration for chocolate is reduced from 30 grams to 20. Winston's job is to go back over newspaper articles and newsreels that featured government promises of the chocolate ration not being reduced, and change them to warnings that a reduction may come. One day later, newsreels start reporting that the ration is being *increased* to 20 grams a week. 
 And everyone accepts it. People celebrate Big Brother, the symbolic head of the government, for his decision to bestow this generous gift on the people. Everyone simply forgets that there was a time when the ration was higher. They accept this alteration of the past, and the government's propaganda that times are good and always getting better, when in fact they are continually deteriorating. 
 This is just one example of the terrifying society Winston inhabits. Orwell never comes out and states what the government is doing. He instead presents all the different methods the Party uses: convincing the people that the orgasm is a crime, erasing people from the record, and Newspeak. 
 What hit me hardest is Winston's conversation with Syme, one of the developers of a new language called Newspeak. Syme's explanation that "shades of meaning" are being eliminated from English, and Shakespeare will have to be rewritten to reflect it, slapped me across the face. Not only is the government manipulating people's memories, but they're making it impossible for people to have rebellious thoughts. 
 If people can't remember happier times, but instead are convinced that they are living in perpetually good times (even as those conditions deteriorate), they people will always stay in their place. If they lose the ability to have thoughts, feelings and emotions in the first place, they will never want to overthrow the government. 
 The proles, the working people, are living in perpetual poverty, but are happy to live in it and never complain because as far as they remember, there have never been better times to live. Chocolate rations have always been high, standard of living has always been wonderful, and times are good. But they are uneducated animals scraping a pointless existence out of the refuse of an unending world war. They mindlessly accept what they're told, do not strive to achieve anything, and don't even know they're oppressed. The government has seen to that; everything they do is to keep the people docile and in their place so the ruling class (the Inner Party) can live in luxury. That is scary. 
 This is masterful world-building. The story is almost irrelevant. The real focus is the world Orwell creates. A truly terrifying and completely believable vision of a future that may have already happened, and we'd never know it. It had my head spinning for hours after I finished it. I strive to blow my readers' minds away like this, too. It is the best novel I've ever read. 
 I did a book/movie comparison. Check it out!