We is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, written in 1920–1921. It was first published as an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York, with the original Russian text first published in 1952. The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. It influenced the emergence of dystopia as a literary genre. George Orwell said that Aldous Huxley's 1931 Brave New World must be partly derived from We, although Huxley denied this. Orwell's own Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) was also inspired by We.
The 1924 Zilboorg translation (from a 1959 republication)
A dystopia, also called a cacotopia or anti-utopia, is a community or society that is extremely bad or frightening. It is often treated as an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence, and poverty. The relationship between utopia and dystopia is in actuality, not one simple opposition, as many utopian elements and components are found in dystopias as well, and vice versa.
Life in Kowloon Walled City has often inspired the dystopian identity in modern media works.
People Leaving the Cities, photo art by Zbigniew Libera, which imagines a dystopian future in which people have to leave dying metropolises