[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, in language, in every area of life—are reduced to the lowest vulgarized denominator of mass consumption. (p. 27)

Along with such familiar indictments, we are given tedious learning: latin and greek etymologies (utopia, anarchy, martyr, etc.; it's like being in high school again) are insisted upon; a poor pun (virginibus, a transport vehicle for nymphets) and an unnecessary coinage (cacotopia) are made. Obviously Burgess regards the present as a bad place rapidly becoming the worst of all possible worlds; obviously he fears and distrusts liberalism and secularism; by equating them with the pelagian heresy and solipsism (history and etymology supplied), he intends to expose their satanic nature; by preaching the practice of Christian principles, he intends to counteract their poison. In short, the "ideas" served up in numerous courses by the essayistic portions of 1985 are the canned, cold staples of conservative Christian humanism, with the traditional bitter sauce of hatred for human institutions and for the present, garnished with pedantry—not a very appetizing feast, I'm afraid. (pp. 27-8)

[The novella] is less fiction than a continuation of the self-interviews, essays, indictments, and what-have-you that surround it. It's all the work of an author operating at half-steam, trivializing his ability by blowing up material suitable for one or two neat op-ed pieces into scads of repetitious, unconvincing blather, an author so enamored of his own ideas that he cannot achieve any intellectual or fictional distance from them. The present and the future are by no means rosy, but Burgess does them, us, and himself no service by taking us for a long ride on that special breed of pet hobby horse, the slipshod nightmare. (p. 28)