1984The new novel by George Orwell is the major work towards which all his previous writing has pointed. Critics have hailed it as his "most solid, most brilliant" work. Though the story of Nineteen Eighty Four takes place thirty five years hence, it is in every sense timely. The scene is London, where there has been no new housing since 1950 and where the city wide slums are called Victory Mansions. Science has abandoned Man for the State. As every