For decades, it has been common to call authoritarian new laws, norms, or government actions “Orwellian.” In 1984, George Orwell so brilliantly portrayed a nightmarish future that his name became synonymous with almost anything one wishes to describe as oppressive. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, meanwhile, provided a rather different but equally bleak vision of the future that is frequently invoked to illuminate our current malaise.

Amid the technological chaos and Western culture wars of the 21st century, thinkpiece writers sporadically debate which of these novels more accurately foresaw our present predicament. Modern China most clearly embodies Orwell’s vision, and elements of both novels can be found in contemporary Western societies. However, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 offered perhaps a more accurate warning than either. Published in 1953, Bradbury’s novel is as gloomy and prescient as either Orwell’s or Huxley’s, but its explanation of how a dystopia is created comes closer to providing an understanding of our new reality.

The primary difference between Huxley’s dystopia and that described by Orwell is the methodology through which humanity is controlled by authoritarian governments. Huxley argued that humans would be tricked into embracing their own enslavement via anti-depressants and various hedonistic distractions, while Orwell held that compliance would more easily be achieved through censorship, mind control, and violence. In a letter to Orwell (his childhood French teacher) upon reading 1984, Huxley insisted that “the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” Certainly, Bradbury’s novel features elements of both; citizens in his future are subject to state violence and also pacified by pleasure and drugs. However, the key distinction here, and Bradbury’s great contribution to dystopian literature, is that we would choose our own intellectual enslavement as well.