This is not one of Asimov's best works. While he is probably right about Orwell's feud with Stalinism, to judge 1984 by how well it predicts the future is beside the point, just as it would be a mistake to judge Asimov's own work by the accuracy of his imagining of future computer technology.<p>Asimov's dismissal of 'newspeak' as mostly just abbreviation completely overlooks the power of propaganda and fake news, or the Whorfian concept that underlies it. He complains that a human-operated surveillance state would not work, but this review was written before the opening of the Stasi files revealed how it does. Asimov's suggestion that Orwell should have posited automated surveillance does, of course, foreshadow what is becoming possible now, but he does not seem to do any better than Orwell in imagining such a future.<p>Orwell's renaming of Britain as 'Airstrip One' shows that, far from thinking of Oceania as the British Empire, he regards Britain as a satellite state of the USA, analogous to the cold war status of Eastern European states.<p>I had to chuckle at Asimov's complaints of sexism and racial bigotry in the novel, considering the prevalence of these things in his beloved 'golden age' science fiction, and for some time after.