I imagined an England rechristened Tucland, with the unions in charge and the only law of the land that of the closed shop. In it, I married off a Prince of Wales to a brunette, though I gave them a son called William. In the late 70s, I published a post-Orwellian novella called 1985 which got the future hopelessly wrong. I have learned, however, that it is dangerous to prophesy. The triumph of the completion of the Channel tunnel will be the child’s exultation at building a sandcastle while the tide is coming in. The smashing of the Berlin Wall is nothing. The problem of the planet is our true problem.
The oceans will grow more filthy and the air less breathable. In other words, we want evidence of an irreversible continuity.The destruction of the environment will go on and the elephant kingdom be liquidated. We will never be sure of the future of the Eastern bloc until a new liberal philosophy is enunciated, and not by Gorbachov alone. Watching on Italian television the meeting of a Slav statesman and a Slav pope, I wondered what the future would be if a mad cardinal drew out a pistol and eliminated them both. On the other hand, I am not too happy about the cult of personality which the Gorbachovian revolution represents. The reunification of Germany will take place in my lifetime, and there will be a resurgence of German patriotism, the need to revive old myths of Germany’s greatness, but I do not envisage the rise of a new Fuhrer. I foresee its becoming more and more intolerant and also militant. Islam cannot be absorbed into the new comity. The opposition to this will not be atheistic Communism but fundamentalist Islam. But now Marxism is seen as an out-of-date philosophy based on nineteenth-century materialism, and the new Europe, which means the overseas Anglophone world as well as the polyglot Continent, will be, if not Judaeo-Christian, at least liberal and humanistic and nostalgic for some kind of faith.
#1985 anthony burgess islam free#
The old opposition was between the Free World, so-called, and the Communist world. If we are to regard Russia as part of Europe, how far then will Europe extend? To Vladivostok? The future of Britain concerns me less than the future of Europe, and about this latter I cannot yet make up my mind. I became a European 21 years ago and was reviled by the Daily Mirror for deserting the old island. I shall be lucky to see the close of the millennium, but I have a fair chance of sourly rejoicing in Britain’s joining the continent by dry land.
I shall almost certainly die before the 90s reach their end. As for what we expect, much depends on how old we are. We enter the 1990s sober, serious, aware of the existence of evil, not so sure what goodness is, cautiously optimistic, a little bewildered by changes that no fiction, however fantastic, would accept. “Gay” has changed its meaning and innocent wickedness is no more. T he only 90s we have known of up to now are the gay or naughty ones.