"I am completely bewildered. Yesterday, at the very moment when I thought that everything was already disentangled, that all the X's were found, new unknown quantities appeared in my equation."

"Of course, it's clear: in order to determine the true value of a function it is necessary to take it to its ultimate limit ... Hence, if we designate love as 'L' and death as 'D,' then L = f(D). In other words, love and death --- yes, exactly, exactly."

"Every equation, every formula in the surface world has its corresponding curve or body. But for irrational formulas, for my square root of -1, we know of no corresponding bodies, we have never seen them ... But the horror of it is that these invisible bodies exist ..."

"I have been teaching this book to AP English students for 20 years. It always provokes a lot of discussion about the science and math contained in it, which I regard as healthy interdisciplinary carry-over. Perhaps part of the problem some readers have with the pseudo-math is that they forget that the protagonist-narrator, a mathematician-engineer, becomes increasingly mentally unstable as the novel progresses. The very foundations of his view of the world as mathematically and rationally definable begin to fail him when he becomes emotionally obsessed with a temptress who is merely using him to foment political rebellion. The mathematical analogies throughout help define the deterioration of his rationality. I would say that the debt to WE voiced by both Huxley and Orwell is indication enough of the literary magnitude of this work as a seminal dystopia."

"I cannot evaluate the math content of We. But the math is not the point. What makes We remarkable and a landmark in Russian literature, or world literature for that matter, is that Zamyatin managed to predict virtually every political/social aspect of high Stalinist culture of the Soviet Union long before those elements occured in reality. I have read the work both in Russian and English. Zamyatin's background in math and engineering allowed him a descriptive power unknown in literature before We. Contemporary Russians upon reading We are astoundied by his predictive insight into a society that he himself never experienced. We is a masterpiece of science fiction and political distopia."

"The math in We may be very basic, and so many readers probably simply consider it pseudo-math. I think it may not be such a good thing to discount it like that. I just finished reading the book, and I found it to be an excellent literary device. There is the story itself, but I honestly think it would not have been the same without the math Zamyatin uses. Their whole society is based on the Table of Hours, which in itself is centered around different calculations. The math Zamyatin actually explains is very often an extension of this, and so has an important role in the development of the plot."

This book seems to focus more on the basic nature of numanity, and its illogical way of functioning. Although THe One State is based on math, math does not seem to play a very large role in the story, whent discussing the story's meaning. If one were to discuss the role of math, it would be to show that humans CANNOT be governed by mathmatic principles and 100% logic. More to the point would be to focus on the idea of happiness, or revolution.

I loved this book. I think it is a great piece of literature and the pseudo math doesn't bother me in the least.