"<i>Year Nine</i> spoofs every sf nightmare of totalitarian dystopia, especially <b><i>1984</i></b> by Connolly's Eton school-chum George Orwell. England's past heritage is being officially erased by dull civil servants like the doomed protagonist, who's led astray by banned Degenerate Art: "Jewlysses. Winagains Fake." Farcically betrayed, tortured and condemned, he still loves Big Brother. "Yes, I have been treated with great kindness."
Surprisingly, <i>Year Nine</i> first appeared in 1938—eleven years before 1984, two years before Koestler's Darkness at Noon. Connolly must have been reading Zamyatin's We (trans 1920)." -David Langford in <i>Fantasy & Science Fiction, November/December 2014</i>
First published January 1938 in The New Statesman
| Date | Publication | Publisher | Type | Page | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1946 | The Condemned Playground | The Macmillan Company | Collection | ||
| March 1971 | Modern Satiric Stories: The Impropriety Principle | Scott, Foresman and Company | Anthology | 111 | |
| August 1973 |
|
Past, Present, and Future Perfect | Fawcett Premier | Anthology | 194 |