George Orwell warned us, and perhaps we didn't listen. But now the author of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is enjoying posthumous sales of his dystopian novel in the wake of the NSA spying scandal.
With whistleblower Edward Snowden's leak of the NSA's data collection strategy from Americans phone and internet records, it seems that some of Orwell's Big Brother (a phrase Orwell coined in the book) concerns are coming true.
As a reward for his long-coming foreshadowing, sales of Orwell's 1949 classic are skyrocketing up hundreds and even thousands of percentage points at Amazon.
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While the numbers have settled a bit, here is where they currently sit:
The website's "Movers & Shakers" list shows a 141 percent increase in sales of the book's "Centennial Edition," a 130 percent increase in the "1984 (Signet Classics)" edition, a 71 percent jump for the paperback version of that edition and a 46 percent increase in sales for a combo with "Animal Farm."
It doesn't hurt when a guy named Barack Obama references your book in a speech, either.
“In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amok,” the president said in a recent statement. “But when you actually look at the details, then I think we’ve struck the right balance.”