When discussing dystopian literature, George Orwell’s 1984 often takes center stage.

Orwell's predictions seemed to have come true in the last century, making his novel feel more like a chilling historical account than fiction. The Communist world was almost a stage for all of his prophecies, leading literary critics to debate for years whether he was anti-socialist or merely anti-totalitarian.

However, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes have not been completely discredited by 1984. The novel's portrayal of Big Brother as a mysterious and omnipotent figure, almost demonic, is terrifying. But is it impossible to have a benevolent and wise ruler? In his other novel, Animal Farm, the pig Snowball, who fled after losing to Napoleon, might represent such a possibility.

Indeed, many scholars believe that if such an ideal ruler existed, a totalitarian dictatorship might be the most efficient system, leading to rapid development, great prosperity, and maximum happiness — at least economically.

Of course, the real world is much more complex, and absolute wisdom is unattainable. Any group or individual is bound to be "foolish" in some ways, not to mention the issue of succession. This is why liberal thought, based on private property and a market economy, has become mainstream.

Yet, consider China. The economic achievements since the reform and opening-up would have been difficult to achieve for any democratic government. If someone were to insist on pursuing this question of whether benevolent dictatorship is better, how should we respond then?

When Huxley wrote Brave New World, he may not have considered these questions, but we can still gain insights from his brilliant imagination.

Brave New World is a Platonic utopia where humans are divided into 5 castes, each with a specific social role. There's no need to worry about class conflict because this issue is resolved from birth through advanced “test-tube” fertilization techniques.

Humans have no parents; they are "tube-born." The intelligence of lower-caste individuals is reduced in the embryonic stage, and they are destined for menial labor. Don't think of this as oppression; it's simply to reduce their suffering, as intelligent people would go mad doing mindless tasks.

With this technology, everyone's future is predetermined from birth. Their lives are dedicated to work and pleasure.

Don't imagine the rulers as deceitful villains as well, as this is vastly different from 1984. There's no deception, just conditioning from birth, including for the rulers themselves. In 1984 perpetual war is necessary to give people “something” to hate and strive for, and all entertainment are forbidden. The language is constantly simplified, reducing the vocabulary to a bare minimum. But in this novel, there's none of that. People work just enough, enjoy themselves greatly, and have no concept of romance, as relationships are casual and promiscuous. There's no madness, no jealousy, and no violence.

If you're still unsatisfied, you can always take drugs. Drugs are legal and distributed daily after work. A single pill can alleviate all your worries.

For those who rebel, the treatment is much gentler than in 1984. In 1984, , love is taken away to instill fear, but in Brave New World, there's no need for love as all physical and economic needs are met. If someone remains defiant, they are simply exiled to a remote island.

Yet, this world still seems unsettling.

But have you noticed how familiar this utopia feels? Many people in our world already live this way: working hard, then filling their free time with sleep and mindless entertainment. They leave the big decisions to others. Even in America, look at how many people were captivated by Obama's simple phrase "yes, we can."

After reading this book, I have a deeper understanding of Václav Havel's call to "live in truth." Living in truth is a true respect for the human mind. It is believing that people can distinguish right from wrong in their own way, establish their own morality, and be their own gods. Therefore, we don't need to use lies, psychological genetic engineering, or various quick fixes to push what we think is right onto others.

All attempts to set ultimate goals for humanity and build utopias based on these goals deprive people of the ability to form their own values. Moreover, they are always dangerous and accompanied by some form of coercion.

3.4 ./ 5 stars

"You all remember," said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, "you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk. History, " he repeated slowly, "is bunk."

The rhetorical skills of the Controller remind me of the Epsilon Semi-Moron who runs one of the bravest new worlds in our current era in bunk.

As I had forgotten the major plot of this dystopian novel written just when fascism emerged in the 1930s, some fifteen years before the nuclear age, I spent a day rereading it with mixed emotions. Some things are almost prophetic in all their scary details, for example the efficiency of the childlike custom-made contributor to consumerist society:

"Adults intellectually and during working hours", he went on. "Infants where feeling and desire are concerned."

The reliable drug - soma - which makes sure that society's stability is not threatened, the focus on entertainment which requires people to spend money on gadgets that keep the economy working, the sexual control mechanisms (for promiscuity is just as limiting as marriage or chastity if you are not given any choice), the early childhood social conditioning in addition to biological selection processes - it all leaves a bitter taste as it rings too many bells.

The part of the plot I found difficult to swallow was the juxtaposition of the scientifically perfected "utopia" of drug-induced happiness with the dirty "natural" world of the savages, who follow absurdly ancient rituals. Their world, where "god" is still needed to balance their suffering and to help them accept ageing, hunger and pain, is like a black-and-white contrast foil. Their need for self-denial in God-fearing doesn't generally differ much from the self-indulgence of the consumption society where soma takes care of controlling emotions and actions. In either case, human beings are controlled, or conditioned, by a greater power, and they can fall back into a state of irresponsible acceptance of pleasure or pain, according to their choice (- which of course is pre-destined by early childhood drilling).

Call me a hopeless idealist, but there is a third alternative!

Human beings can be offered the freedom of choice if they learn to embrace diversity, knowledge and differences of individuals rather than the "utopian" goal of "sameness" of one kind or the other. If sameness is the ultimate goal, any paradise will turn into hell, an automatic regression into robotic behaviour will follow, regardless of the oppressive dictatorship that imposes it (consumerism and religious doctrine are quite the same in Brave New World).

Interestingly, Huxley himself commented on the problematic binary world he had created when he reflected on his novel in 1946. His third option, to decentralise power and encourage individual freedom, is still a work in progress in our historical (bunk) era, and his two dystopian visions have merged into one. The worship of His Fordship, the consumerist god of the capitalist world, has been combined with ancient religious rites serving as soma for some people, while others take the more direct approach of over-consumption of food and fun and drug intake against meaninglessness. It made me think of another novel showing two juxtaposed oppressive systems, Things Fall Apart. British colonial rule, with all its religious and social implications, stands against the ancient rites of the Nigerian past, which to me would constitute just as much of a dictatorship against my personal wishes. Two opposing, rigid systems leaving no individual freedom, two doctrines that condemn whatever is different from their own specific tradition. Zero tolerance for individual differences. No compromise or combination possible. It is either or. No third or fourth option.

"Oh Ford" can be used as casually as "Oh Lord" (of whichever confession), and has about as much impact. Margaret Atwood in her MaddAddam at least insisted that her new deity "Oh Fuck" should only be called upon in emergencies.

I finish reading Brave New World with the feeling that it is time to call on Atwood's god, for the bravest and newest of worlds is in danger. The devil is in the sameness, as is god. For they are the same thing, utopia and dystopia being completely identical, turning humans into Epsilon Semi-Morons, children or robots. Even Shakespeare can be destroyed by application in banal situations. If history is bunk, everything is always new and brave. But also meaningless.

Oh Fuck!

Although not my favorite of the classic dystopians, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is certainly a ground-breaking work about societal control through genetic manipulation, subliminal conditioning and socially acceptable drug use.

You are not born into this world; you are decanted. The institution of the traditional family has fallen apart- is even considered obscene.

Children run about naked and wild, experimenting with sex from a shockingly young age. This is a world where everyone's body belongs to everyone else. Promiscuity is encouraged as well as mass consumption and instant gratification.

Men and women take a drug called "soma" to mellow out any pesky emotions. It is also used in quasi-religious ceremonies and public gatherings to create a kind of ecstasy.

A strict caste system is in place from the moment a baby is decanted. Societal mores are whispered into children's ears thousands of times per week while they sleep. So, when they grow up, they fit seamlessly into the role that the world has chosen for them from conception.

Not everyone is happy in this world. Can you imagine that? Perhaps they just need more soma...

Recommended for those who enjoy classic works that examine the way society's systems constrain and suffocate those who, for whatever reason, don't or can't fit in.

Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1932. That's almost eighty years ago, but the book reads like it could have been written yesterday. (especially interesting to me was how Huxley was able to predict the future of both genetic engineering and the action blockbuster. Damn.)

I think I liked this one better than 1984, the book traditionally considered to be this one's counterpart. Not really sure why this is, but it's probably because this one has a clearer outsider character (the Savage) who can view the world Huxley created through his separate perspective.

In this light, I will give the last word to Neil Postman, who discussed the differences between Orwell and Huxley's views of the future:

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
Orwell feared those who would deprive us information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
As Huxley remarked in 'Brave New World revisited,' the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.'
In 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' people are controlled by inflicting pain. In 'Brave New World' people are controlled by inflicting pleasure.
In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

Now that´s how good fordshipping alphas, betas, and the unimportant, stupid, but still necessary other lower castes, like to roll.

It don´t always have to be annoying secret police death squads kicking ones´ door at 3 am to usher one into torture prisons and detention, reeducation, and extermination camps, it can be much more subtle and less bloody too. Like in real, nowadays Western democracies for instance.

Drugs
Soma could be seen as a metaphor for everything, all the free and prescription drugs everyone from kid to grandpa is boosted with, or as all the coincidental side effects of all the chemicals and poisons food and environment provide for the modern human.

Sex
What´s better than getting horny high as hell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1188...
so the government wants their citizens as fu**ed up as possible to let them better deal with life in general and absolutely not care about who is ruling over them. Best combined with flaming monogamy to stigmatize possible, alternative ways of finding happiness like love or a great, deep relationship with friends and family.

Media
All propaganda and forced into line, controlled by conglomerates and the military industrial complex with their sockpuppet politicians driveling manufacturing consent. But I began thinking about the fact that streaming and the incredible world of 4K and 8K old school media and VR is just the beginning and one can imagine how this might look in 100 or multi k years. People who are still free to choose will prefer the perfect, forever, simulated utopia to reality and many won´t even have the chance to realize that they´re manipulated or living in a kind of simulation, because the perfection of how the system is run leaves no room for bugs and glitches that could make them suspicious. That was a bit off topic, back to the show.

Good upbringing
To make sure that nobody avoids the first 3, special prenatal, baby, and child treatment methods are implemented to get what´s needed for the right purpose of breeding cheerful idiots. Not more or less of something that´s essential for the perfect functioning of the world government that once was a single state. Nice innuendo so socioeconomic status defining the worth of everyone and the lovely side effects of eugenics implemented, without biotech, but much medtech.

Drugs, sex, media, and good upbringing together make good sheeps
All together leads to the happy slave tragedy, that people are completely satisfied with their life and not even noticing what´s really going on. The perfect, forever dictatorship, one could also call it the end of history with, totally realistic, endless, exponential, economic growth in liberal democracies.

Similar stuff
I´ll add this to my somewhen, procrastination caused postponed, review of 1984 too. If you´re a time traveler, you might have already seen it.
Besides Brave new world, Karel Capeks´
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
dark, disturbing masterpiece is possibly one of the best dystopian terror pieces. It´s focusing on the role of big money and industry, of innocence turned into the same evil it suffers, was written in 1936 and satirizes Germans, Japanese, Russians, societies, ideologies, and economy in general and is a timeless memorial against political and economic terrorism and extremism of any kind.
Aldous Huxley, duh, was Orwells´ college professor and they definitively inspired and mentally inseminated another to form these brave new worlds.
Zamyatin Yevgenys´ We is another, historical extremely interesting piece, although just not as famous and fancy as the others, kind of the same problem as with the underappreciated Capek.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
An extremely difficult to read one is Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
which comes very close to Huxleys´ ideas, but is much darker.
Some more dark and/ or satiric tones:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
A similar idea by the master of philosophical, satirical sci-fi, the great, unique Lem:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...

There have been so many deep, detailed thoughts about how to install the best dictatorship ever, and give aspiring god emperors some tips on the way to total world domination, that don´t get appreciated enough because Huxley and Orwell are ruling the dystopic genre. How ironic.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

This book presents a futuristic dystopia of an unusual kind. Unlike in Orwell's 1984, Huxley's dystopia is one in which everyone is happy. However, they are happy in only the most trivial sense: they lead lives of simple pleasures, but lives without science, art, philosophy or religion. In short, lives without deeper meaning. Although people are expected to work hard and efficiently during working hours, during off hours people live in an infantile way, never engaging their minds, and satisfying themselves with sex and drugs.

The premise of the book I find quite interesting. However, the execution is lacking. The characters are not particularly endearing, and indeed they are quite flat. Worse, Huxley fails to explain why this future of controlled contentment is wrong. The reader will intuit that the this indeed a dystopia posing as a utopia, but Huxley's reliance on this feeling is a philosophical failure. It is the burden of the author to present us not with an account of something we know is bad, but to explain the source of the knowledge.

Huxley attempts something akin to an explanation in the second-to-last chapter, a discussion between "the Savage" who grew up outside civilization and Mustalpha Mond, a World Controller. However, the attempt falls short, as Mond has concise answers to all of the Savage's questions, and the Savage lacks the education and/or intellectual power to find reason behind his feelings.

During the conversation, Mond refers to philosopher Francis Bradley and credits him with the idea that philosophy is "the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct." Perhaps this inclusion is intended to convey that Huxley agrees and will make no attempt to manufacture a "bad reason" why the world he created is evil. However, I find this deeply unsatisfying. Why write a book to tell people what they already know? Moreover, a single reference to Bradley is not sufficient to convince me that this definition of philosophy is correct. If Huxley's novel relies heavily on this idea, he should have supported it with more than a solitary statement of Mond. Indeed, Mond promptly refutes the statement by denying instinct as separate from conditioning, and as the civilized population of the world seems to be controlled largely by conditioning, it would seem that in Huxley's world, Mond is correct!

In summary, Huxley crafts an interesting future world where people are blithely content without knowing passion or pain. Unfortunately, he fails both to craft an interesting story to set in this world and to write a strong philosophical argument why such a world would be harmful for mankind. He relies on the obvious faults of the world and the intuitive reaction of the reader, and thus provides no deeper insights.

As a social message, as a novel, and as a statement on the way in which mankind should behave, I find Brave New World inferior in almost every way to 1984. The one word of praise I will give to Huxley's novel is that his dystopia is more unusual and more intriguing than Orwell's. If only he had dome something more with it.

I was thinking, today, that this damn pandemic has turned our plans upside down, to those of us who are still breathing, and we tell ourselves that everything will be fine. This collapse, and the new way of life made me think of Huxley's book, only the tyrant has a different face.
The Brave New World - was an arrow that went far beyond what Huxley would have ever imagined, because most likely, not even he imagined that 8 decades later, people would seek refuge in all sorts of activities that prevent them from any judgement, just as the characters of the brave new world took refuge in the soma,to block the real sadness.
The Brave New World is revealed to you from the first pages, a world in which monogamy is the greatest possible indecency, and the family is just an absolutely disgusting atavistic réminiscence.
But, is it really a dystopia ?
We like to think that yes, after all, it's hard to admit that it would be difficult to refuse a life of Alpha plus, that it wouldn't be unfair at all, for Epsiloni and Delta,because they do not know, and have no way of knowing what justice and injustice mean.
But, when your whole value system is built on the premise that you have your well-established place in society, and you never ask yourself questions about what you should do - do you realize how much human existence is simplified ?
I don't know what it's like for others, but to me, this life built on certainties doesn't seem bad at all.
After all, all studies say that when you think too much, you are unhappy.
It seems to me ironic that Huxley's attempt to satirize the society of the '30, became, 80 years later, an approach that people really take seriously.We live in a world of people where it is no longer enough to be happy, in fact, it is no longer necessary, as long as you seem happy.It's true that we haven't gotten as far as Huxley's vision, but we're definitely on the right track. Unfortunately, Huxley's novel is more than a social satire of consumerist America from the beginning of the 20th century, he must remind us that humanity means, first and foremost - pain.
The pain of knowing you're going to die, and the revolt that comes with it. The pain of understanding that whatever you do in life, at the last moment you will still have regrets. That you will not be able to see all the places in the world. Some people, you will lose them sooner than others. Sometimes, you'II sit at a table with then friends, but you'II know you're alone. The pain of understanding that happiness lies in the moments, you have it, and disappears in the next moment, it is not a cool hat that you wear and it helps you to ignore all the doubts and fears that define you, as a human being.

Warning! The following review contains humor. If you read it and actually think that I'm being critical of Huxley, try reading it again. (Here's a hint. Look for the irony of the italicized parts when compared to the previous statements.) If you post a comment that asserts that I'm wrong/ stupid/ crazy for this and/or try to lecture me on all the points you think I missed then I'm going to assume that you read it literally, missed the joke, didn't read the other comments where I've already answered this about a dozen times, and I will delete your post.

I have to apologize for this review. The concept of this book was so outlandish that I think it made my mind wander, and you may find some odd random thoughts scattered in it.

Anyhow, this book was so silly and unrealistic. Like any of this could happen. In the far future the babies are genetically engineered and designed for certain stations in life with a large workforce bred to be happy with menial jobs that don’t stress them physically or mentally. I really should look into getting that data entry position I saw in the job postings. It’d be a lot less stressful than what I‘m doing now.

In addition to all the genetic modifications, the children are raised by the state, and words like ’father’ and ’mother’ are considered obscenities. Subliminal messaging through infancy and childhood also condition people to repeat idiotic platitudes as if they are genuine wisdom. I’ve been in a bad mood today. I need to turn that frown upside down. And since the world economy depends on constant consumption by the highest classes, they’re encouraged to be wasteful The collars on a couple of my shirts are a little frayed. I should go buy some new ones and throw the old ones out. and to engage in activities that demand spending and resource use. Should I get a new set of golf clubs? I lost my old ones when we moved, but I hadn’t played in a long time. But would I play more if I got new clubs? There‘s that really nice looking course right down the street. I don‘t know how they keep the grass that green in this heat. The population even gets to zip around in their own private helicopters rather than cars. Man, when are they going to come out with jet packs for everyone. It’s 2011 and I’m still driving around in a car like a chump. I want my jet pack!

Casual sex is actively encouraged. Wow. These condom commercials on TV have gotten really racy. The population is also programmed to be constantly partaking of some form of entertainment and to never just sit quietly and think I’m bored. Writing is boring. or to be alone Let’s check Facebook and see what all my friends are doing.

One of the sillier ideas is that the foundation of this society is Henry Ford’s assembly lines and that Ford has become the most revered figure in history. Like a businessman could ever become that popular. Is Steve Jobs making any announcements this week? I get itchy when there‘s no new Apple products.

While everyone seeks to be constantly entertained, all of the entertainment panders to the lowest common denominator. Hey, Jersey Shore is on! and the emphasis is on presenting it with gimmicks to engage the audience like ’the feelies’, movies that the audience can also smell and feel the sensation from. I wonder if they’ll re-release Avatar at the movies so I can see it in 3D again like James Cameron intended? At one point, a character complains about the feelies, “But they’re told by an idiot….works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation.” I should go see that new Michael Bay Transformers movie.

Perhaps the most far fetched idea in this is that the population has been trained to sedate themselves with a drug called soma that relives any potential anxieties and keeps people from thinking about anything upsetting. I want a beer.

I guess this Huxley guy might have gotten lucky and predicted a few things, but he was way off base about where society was going.

n  n    “But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” n  n

These are words uttered in the face of tyranny and complete oppression, though they are very rare words to be spoken or even thought of in this world because every human passion and sense of creativity is repressed and eradicated through a long and complex process of conditioning.

And that’s what makes this novel so powerful; it’s not unbelievable. Like Orwell’s 1984 and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, there’s just enough truth within Brave New World for it to be real. It’s a cruel mirroring of our own existence, should we follow a certain path too strongly. And that's the wonder of speculative fiction, though unlike the other two books, there’s no violence involved in Huxley’s world. It’s just as controlling and scary, but it’s done in a more indirect way.

Sex is on tap, everybody should be happy.

People don’t go missing in the night nor are they stoned to death by a group of their peers, but they have just as little freedom (even if they don’t realise it.) In this dystopia they are trained from birth to think and feel in a certain way, and, for whatever reason, should they ever deviate from their ordained path, they are fed drugs that induce happiness and serenity; thus, the populace is kept within their desired space, and persist with the tasks they were born to do. Very few of them even consider that this is wrong; this is all they have known. And to make things even more maniacally clever, all physical and sexual needs are fulfilled completely as everybody belongs to everybody else in every sense with the ultimate goal of people never developing desire. All desire should be fulfilled, nobody wants for anything else.

People are machines and houses are factories. They are mass produced and designed to be one thing and one thing only. All values are inverted. The idea of showing any emotion is horrific and repulsive. Love is unknown and alien. Death is associated with sweetness and relief. Children are fed candy when they are thought about death, so they associate the two together, so when as adults they see death they think of treats rather than the loss of someone they have known and worked beside for years.

In Brave New World people are husks, empty and detached, without ever realising it.


-John, the savage, as he enters the new world

I can only admire and praise Huxley’s genius through the writing. Like all effective dystopian societies, reading and information plays an exceedingly important role. As with Ray Bradbury'sFahrenheit 451, all books have been destroyed and made inaccessible. John, one of the few characters who was born away from the new world, stumbles across a volume of Shakespeare and it changes his life. He can only think and feel in Shakespearean language and begins to view the world through a semi-romantic lens and only finds depravity when he walks into the new world.

It’s everything he hates. He has been termed the savage, though he knows and understands the real meaning of the term even if those who call him such do not. Naturally, he becomes depressed and isolated in this new space, a space that he cannot be a part of or accepted in (not that he would want to be.) And I found him by far the most interesting and compelling character within the story because he is the only one to really look beyond the boundaries of his own experience and to find it wanting.

So this is a terribly important novel and I can’t believe I have only just read it. If you haven’t read it already, you know what you have to do. This isn’t something to be missed. It’s a novel that made me think and imagine in a way a book hasn’t done in quite some time.

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"Everybody's happy now."
"Yes, everybody's happy now," echoed Lenina. They had heard the words repeated a hundred and fifty times every night for twelve years.

Well, I enjoyed this one much more this time around than I did when I was forced to read it in high school. I'm old enough now to appreciate that the book is not so much a dour prediction of things to come as it is a fine, comedic satire (yes - I did say "comedic"), with Huxley poking fun at pretty much everything. He wasn't trying to be predictive; he just wanted to entertain us. It's not his fault we've turned out to be a society of intellectually lazy peons who look to screens for entertainment.

"Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for?"

Netflix and chill, baby!

In the end, we can cry for the Savage's fate, and bemoan what becomes of Linda, but at least we're encouraged by lucky Bernard's future.

"He's being sent to an island. That's to say, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own."

And, I'm still left wondering if I'm pneumatic enough . . .

I have now concluded another of the grand pantheon of the classics of the dystopian genre. It is no mere clone of the other works, although incidentally it does feature cloning within its story. I would place this on the same level as 1984 in terms of the ideas conveyed within. However I would also say that it completely stands alone as its own creation. It perhaps has less solidity and depth and the words are less lyrical and poetic than Orwell's. That said I was blown away at several key moments in this book. As far as my journeys in the dystopian genre go if you're trying it out 1984 and Brave New World are your first stops. Closely accompanied by Fahrenheit 451.

n  "'Human beings used to be...' he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. 'Well they used to be viviparous.'"n

The plot follows Bernard Marx originally in a world where everything from people to lifestyle has become a product of the government. Children are no longer born (except in the few refuges where savages or Indians live - is this Huxley's way of making reference to the racial tensions of his era?) they are produced and they are brainwashed by the government in every inch of their lives. From being told that "everyone is everyone else's" to being told about their privilege as a member of their particular caste individuals undergo hypnopaedia or sleep teaching at an early age to condition them to fit into this manufactured society.

n  "'Talking about her as if she were a bit of meat.' Bernard ground his teeth. 'Have her here, have her there. Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mutton..."n

Bernard Marx is one individual who recognises his conditioning and as such does not feel at ease in his falsified world. In this way he reminds in a way of Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby as a man also trapped by the expectations of his strange environment. Yet Marx (interesting choice of a name considering the rise of Marxist principles at the time) feels that he can do little about it. Instead he falls into line with the debauchery of life as it stands. For when sex no longer is about reproduction in this society it becomes instead a careless act for these people. They 'have' who they want as everyone belongs to everyone else (a creed reminiscent of the rules of the Party in 1984) and this eroticism is encouraged from the age of childhood an idea appalling to any sensible individual.

n  "No, the real problem is: How is it that I can't, or rather - because, after all, I know quite well why I can't - what would it be like if I could, if I were free - not enslaved by my conditioning."n

Into this environment Bernard brings a 'savage' (a young man taught the ideal of commitment in marriage and of family through mother and father). From then on the reader is left to observe what happens as he with his limited understanding of the world - seen though the forbidden works of Shakespeare - tries to understand what life holds for him in such a gluttonously lustful culture. Ultimately he does find the world hopelessly depressing and we are left to witness his sad ending when the Controller of this industrial world tells him the truth in a truly memorable and moving scene.

n  "Nay but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty..."n

The writing of Huxley may not match the poetic lyricism of George Orwell - and Brave New World may not be the best written novel of all time - but it is still solid writing. My favourite chapter was probably the third when Huxley chose to use a variety of quick, short, sharp sentences and phrases as paragraphs to create a flow of thoughts. It read very much like an onslaught of clashing advertising ideas and really struck home the idea of conditioning for me. Normally such use of words proves gimmicky but somehow Huxley succeeded in channelling meaning through such a barrage of confusing statements.

n  "'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." n

The real power of Huxley's work is not in his choice of words but in how he manages to convey so many ideas in such a brief amount of time (only a little over 200 pages). There are so many themes resonant within this book from: the need of humans to manipulate environments to the idea of how morality, commitment and sexuality are linked. Then there is the desire of humans to escape the natural programming we live under and the controversial topic of genetic manipulation and whether we as humans really have the right to mess with life at the level of embryos and foetuses. And that is only a handful of the ideas within this novel. Like Franz Kafka in The Metamorphosis Huxley creates a novel full of ambiguity and obvious ideas which enables the reader to take away what they wish. It is truly a powerful classic in that regard.

n  "'O Brave new world that has such people in it."n

Again as with 1984, the story of Brave New World is linked to other events and textual ideas. The title was itself taken from The Tempest (one of the classic Shakespeare plays I am yet to read but may soon). The title was as such a curious foreshadowing of how Shakespearian texts are used intertextually in Brave New World. Where 1984 was linked to the 'threat' of Communism however, Brave New World is Fordism taken to its most extreme level along with the ideas of Freud. There was an almost religious connection to those two figures where they were called Our Ford or Our Freud. The thought was that the commercialisation techniques created by Ford could be taken too far and be applied to human lives. The other thought was that the psychological techniques of Freud and in particular his idea that human beings are carnal creatures could be taken too far. Considering that he was writing when these were new and now wholly trusted ideas his work is profound and also almost reads as a judgement against the 'immorality' of the rolling 20s when lifestyles were more carefree. It was this era which led to the Great Depression in many ways and perhaps Huxley was writing an indictment of the selfish lifestyles which triggered such a catastrophe.

Ultimately for a book that is designed to be uncomfortable and dark Brave New World is a fascinating novel. Its links with history, psychology and philosophy lift it from fascinating to insightful and its message raises it further again. This is a true classic: dark and profoundly inspired. In many ways its message is prophetic reaching out across time to make us question how we are conditioned by our world and how we turn life into a consumer's market.