Red Flags When George Orwell’s novel, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four,’ was published in 1949, it’s unlikely anyone thought it would actually come true, but a lot of it has. The same is true of Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ which came out in 1957. Both dystopian novels describe government overreach, mostly through liberalism, socialism, and political correctness, which culminate in the collapse of capitalism and the downfall of society in general.