It's a dark time when a book of fiction is banned. This book is 1984. The book was banned in the United States and North Korea for being communist propaganda. It was prohibited in Russia and China for anti-communist propaganda.

Who was George Orwell before he wrote books? His name was Eric Blair, and as a young man he worked for a department of the British government in the 1930s. He was so disgusted by the propaganda the British Government used against its people, that he resigned in disgust and started writing books under the alias of George Orwell; he was labeled a communist and a traitor.

His books were listed as fiction in the hope that people would not take him seriously. Sadly, as we now know only too well, his nightmarish predictions are becoming truer each day, and his books should be reclassified to nonfiction.

George Orwell's novel has been brought up recently because of the dark times we live in now, with all the news laws and all constitutional rights taken away from us. Many terms and facts he used and the world he crafted does have some similarities, but it is dystopian in its own right.

He who controls the present controls the past, he who controls the past controls the future. What caused this to happen? What made 1984 such a dark novel that "Orwellian" is now a term? How can a simple book of fiction get banned?