Nineteen Eighty-Four has given us a whole slew of shorthand phrases for dystopian or oppressive governments and surveillance, but even if you’ve already read about Winston Smith’s struggle against Big Brother, there are a few facts, stories, and theories about the novel that are worth a closer look. 1. It almost wasn’t called Nineteen Eighty-Four. Before Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, Orwell was wracked with indecision about it. For a while, he considered the title The Last Man in Europe. 2. George Orwell had trouble deciding what year to set the story in. Before assigning his fearful prognostications to the year 1984, Orwell based the novel in both 1980 and 1982.