Who controls the past controls the future.
George Orwell, 1984
Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell might have been alluding to the dangers of stealth-editing when he wrote these lines for his 1949 dystopian novel. It’s funny to think that a work of fiction once so futuristic is now “so old” it no longer has copyright protection, but it’s true, as true as two plus two is… four. Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel entered the public domain in the United Kingdom this year. With Orwell’s final book hitting the bestseller lists at various times during the last decade (pretty impressive for a 70-plus-year-old work), I expect we’ll see numerous U.K.-based publishers coming out with their own creative editions. The first-ever graphic novel adaptation is already slated for release in August.