Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | Increasingly relevent as time goes on

Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | Dystopia at its best.

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Brave New World

	Brave New World Aldous Huxley Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 734 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Increasingly relevent as time goes on

I think Brave New World speaks for itself well:

"The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." -Pg 220

In a world where there are no more families, scientific curiosity, or independent thought, Brave New World shows us what a society that values social stability and base happiness above all else looks like. Babies are no longer born, they are manufactured in laboratories en masse. People only have casual sex, and love and monogamy are taboos. Whenever a person has any negative feeling, they take a drug called soma that lifts them out of reality into a blissful state isolated from the real world. Individuality is disdained and a punishable offense. Growing up, children are conditioned to accept death as equal to any other bodily function, like sneezing. Love no longer exists.

Aldous Huxley shows us the consequences of such a world. The society of Brave New World will be very depressing to anyone who loves freedom and values the individual. With the increasing growth of nanny states in the world today, I believe that Brave New World paints an important picture of the negative relationship between social stability and personal freedom.

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Dystopia at its best.

Brave New World is a great dystopic and satirical novel. Aldous Huxley created a world where babies are created in test tubes; love, art, literature, and even science are all things of the ancient past; promiscuity and brainlessness happiness are qualities to be revered; people are conditioned to be satisfied with their place in society, no matter where it is. In some ways, this is our society today, as well as where we might be in the future. Huxley did a great job of showing that happiness 100% of the time shouldn't be the only thing we, as a society, strive for. Other things are more important, like freedom and creativity.

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Experienceing Scifi for the nerd in you

Brave New World is an excellent choice for anyone who likes to geek out on their English major status. The references to Shakespeare are well used in the text and make it one of those little gems that keeps you looking for more. On the scifi nerd front, the futurismic world of happiness at the cost of intellect is one of those ideas that gets repeated often enough, but that is only because so many people love to pilfer from Huxley. I really enjoyed Brave New World, even if there were a few philosophical points on which I disagree with Huxley (particularly the false dichotomy he expects the reader to blindly accept). As a dystopian writer Huxley is rightly placed with the greats like Orwell and Zamyatin.

Oh yeah, and Leonard Nimoy was great in this movie, they should make it into a book.

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"the secret of happiness and virtue--liking what you've got to do"

Due to years of hypnopedia, the two million inhabitants of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, work contentedly day after day and year after year at the job for which they have been conditioned. Beyond the brainwashing, the sole motivator for their uncomplaining efforts is a psychotropic drug called Soma. But one citizen, Bernard Marx, an Alpha Plus psychologist (top of the pecking order) and hypnopedia expert during the time in which Brave New World is set, 632 A.F. (in the year of Our Ford), is feeling disillusioned. His pat reply to the sunny phrases (like (p 50) "Everybody's happy now,") spewed regularly by members of the brainwashed masses, is that particular mantra's conditioning regime (e.g. (p 62) "Two hundred repetitions, twice a week from fourteen to sixteen and a half"). Wanting to establish a nontraditional relationship with a woman "known" to many, Lenina Crowne, he entices her with a date involving entry to a place of limited access: the Savage Reservation, where humans are viviparous (elsewhere, humans are fertilized and formed entirely in test tubes). The couple is stunned at what they encounter: an elderly man, a woman nursing, and a slovenly, aged-looking mystery woman from their own world (off reservation, humans are chemically "preserved" into youthfulness until age 60). Unsurprisingly, the mystery woman and her son, ostracized for their differences on reservation, fare even worse in the Other Place.

Beyond the obvious issues like social class, behavioral conditioning, cloning, religion, morality, mortality and cultural differences between peoples, are those involving world politics and politicians. Huxley's fantastic, futuristic tale, first published in 1932, was ahead of its time in many ways, and will likely strike a chord with readers one and all. Also good, 1984 by George Orwell, The Giver by Lois Lowery, and Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle.

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Brave New World

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley ****

The precursor to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, and the opposite theory. This was and still is one of the most important novels in the history of novels. Huxleys thoughts on a world obsessed with sex, and personal pleasures is so relevant today.

The premise of the book is that the previous world the one we knew in the 1920's was replaced by one obsessed with personal fulfillment with reckless abandon for others and yet we still 'all belong to one another.' It is a hard concept to rap your head around which makes this a challenging and fulfilling read. Though sometimes the book lags in places it makes up for it in others.

Though it was written so long ago the book shows a chilling truth to today's world much like Nineteen Eighty Four does but on a different plain. It is worth the read if you are really interested with an open mind and have patience but if not, then don't even try.

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