Introduction

Abstract

This chapter argues for the importance of literature and film in understanding the human dimension of surveillance. It recognises that George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is the ‘go-to’ text when surveillance is discussed in the pubic arena, but it argues that, in a world of computer surveillance and Big Data, we need to move beyond Orwell if we are understand surveillance and respond imaginatively to it. It makes the case that the utopian genre has long presented a rich and provocative set of texts that encourage us to think imaginatively about surveillance. It also registers how surveillance scholars have often utilised such texts for illustrative purposes without fully exploring the rich generic links the current book analyses at length and in depth.