How does the novel, The Avatar, connect to the world we live in today?

Like the future depicted in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949; see separate entry), The Avatar's future world looks disturbingly like our present one, changed in significant but plausible ways. Earth is ruled by sick-minded politicians for whom power over others is the only goal worth having. Those who live on Earth are slowly having their freedoms constricted and their burdens to the government increased. Bit by bit, liberties disappear and the belief that individual people can make better decisions for themselves than can the government is ridiculed. The ability to leave Earth is almost the only avenue to a free life left to humanity—and most people have no hope of leaving Earth.