Brave New World

Stephen

Rating: really liked it


I need to parse my rating of this book into the good (or great), the bad and the very fugly because I thought aspects of it were inspired genius and parts of it were dreggy, boring and living near the border of awful. In the end, the wowness and importance of the novel's ideas as well as the segments that I thoroughly enjoyed carried the book to a strong 3.5 star rating.

THE REALLY GOOD/EXCELLENT - I loved the first third of the book in which the basic outline of the "Brave New World" and its devalued, conveyer belt morality is set forth. The narrative device employed by Huxley of having the Director of Hatchery and Conditioning provide a walking tour to students around the facility as a way to knowledge up the reader on the societal basics was perfect. We learn of the cloning/birthing process, the caste system and the fundamental tenets upon which the society is organized.


This was as good a use of infodumping exposition as I had come across in some time and I was impressed both with the content and delivery method. The reader gets a crash course in world and its history in a way that fit nicely into the flow of the narrative without ever feeling forced. This was easily the best part of the novel for me, and Huxley's mass production-based society of enforced hedonism and anti-emotion was very compelling. Sort of like...


Now, long jumping to the end of the novel...

I also thought the final "debate" near the story's climax between John (the "savage") and Mustapha Mond, the World Controller, was exceptional. This last chapter/ending of the book, while abrupt, was masterful and struck the proper chord with the overall theme of the book.

Thus, a superior 4.5 to 5.0 stars for this portion of the book.

THE BAD/AWFUL - I thought the middle of the book including both the trip to the "reservation" and John's initial return to London was a sleeping pill and felt disconnected from the rest of the narrative. Throughout this entire portion of the book, all I kept thinking was...

The only purpose of this long, long.....LONG section seems to be to allow the reader to see Bernard Marx do a complete 180 in his views on the society once he finds himself in the role of celebrity by virtue of his relationship with John the savage. Sorry, this just did not strike me as a big enough payoff for this dry, plodding section. It was a test of endurance to get through this portion of the book, so I'm being generous when I give it a weak 2.0 to 2.5 stars. I could just have easily summed it up by just saying...


Bottom-line, I think this is a book that should be read. It's important book and there is much brilliance here. Plus, it is short enough that the stale boring segments aren't too tortuous to get through. However, as far as the triumvirate of classic dystopian science fiction goes...1984 is still the undisputed champ.

3.0 Stars. Recommended.

Kemper

Rating: really liked it
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.

Madeline

Rating: really liked it
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."

Emily May

Rating: really liked it
Wow, the anger over this rating! My first post for this book was a quote and a gif of Dean from Supernatural rolling his eyes and passing out. And people were pissed. How dare I?

Lol. I'm honestly just so tired of all the dumb comments demanding that I (all caps) "ELABORATE". It's been going on for SIX YEARS now. So I will: This is still one of the most boring emotionless books I have ever read. It seemed like a natural choice after I loved Orwell and Atwood but, my god, Huxley is a dry, dull writer.

Another reviewer called this book a "sleeping pill" and that is a fantastic description. After all the hullabaloo with my original post, I borrowed Brave New World from my local library with the intention of reading it again to give a more detailed review for those freaking out in the comments. And I returned it after suffering through only a few pages. A few years later I got the ebook, thinking I would eventually make it through somehow. But I haven't. It's so mind-numbingly dull. I don't want to do it to myself. The Globalization of World Politics was more enjoyable than this book.

Sean Barrs

Rating: really liked it
“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.”

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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Erin

Rating: really liked it
remember that last semester of english class, senior year, where every class seemed painfully long and excrutiatingly pointless? when everybody sat around secretly thinking of cute and witty things to put in other people's yearbooks? when the teachers realized we were already braindead from filling out three dozen student loan applications and college housing forms? that's when honors english started getting a little lazy.

not that i minded. everybody got a book list. then everybody got split up into groups. you were responsible for reading all the books on your own, but one in particular was chosen for your group to present at the end of the semester. you know--- as a refresher for the rest of the class. because of course EVERYONE was gonna read EVERY book.

i can't remember what i did instead of reading "brave new world", but it was probably fun and involved copious amounts of sweet tea and a gigantic paper mache cow. fortunately it didn't matter because the only group to take their presentation seriously was the "brave new world" group, and the way they presented stuck with me long enough to compel me to read the book later.

maybe it was the weird music they had playing during their presentation, maybe it was the fact that super hot chris mayns had to sit in my group (the alphas) but i was seriously attracted to the world this group created in our classroom. we drew cards randomly to determine our class, then sat accordingly and wore cute little colored wristbands. everybody got pez (soma!) and *gasp* a birth control belt. throughout the presentation people were moved next to someone and lost a packet on their belt (listen, this is scandalous for a bible belt high school, ok? by the way, i did NOT get to sit next to chris, which is probably good because i would have been mortified and choked on a pez)

anyway, the presentation was fun, but i didn't get around to reading my (now ex) boyfriends copy until a year ago. and i started getting a small, evil thought exactly the same as i had in class so many years ago... maybe some people would actually like this system. maybe some people would actually BENEFIT from this system. people don't have to think? they aren't expected to do much, go to college, become something bigger than what they actually are? they're rewarded with good feeling drugs? they are proud to have accomplished what they have? and they... DON'T HAVE TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES!?

I know i'm going to get slammed for saying this later, especially because i never do actual reviews or completely delve into what i'm thinking (so shoot me) but haven't you ever been roaming the world wide inter-web and found a little troller you thought "well, this person is a poor use of a human brain?" yes, you have. admit it.

just think, a little test tube tweaking and that person wouldn't mind manning the cash register at piggly wiggly for the rest of his life, saving the rest of humanity from noxious online rants about the hotness of avril lavinge and the brilliance of starcraft (apparently its a video game thats KOOLER THAN U!!!!1#)

you're tempted, i can tell...

Johannes

Rating: really liked it
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.

Ahmad Sharabiani

Rating: really liked it
(Book 649 From 1001 Books) - Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley. Published in 1932.

The novel opens in the World State city of London in AF (After Ford) 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar), where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination programmes into predetermined classes (or castes) based on intelligence and labor.

Lenina Crowne, a hatchery worker, is popular and sexually desirable, but Bernard Marx, a psychologist, is not.

He is shorter in stature than the average member of his high caste, which gives him an inferiority complex.

His work with sleep-learning allows him to understand, and disapprove of, his society's methods of keeping its citizens peaceful, which includes their constant consumption of a soothing, happiness-producing drug called Soma.

Courting disaster, Bernard is vocal and arrogant about his criticisms, and his boss contemplates exiling him to Iceland because of his nonconformity. His only friend is Helmholtz Watson, a gifted writer who finds it difficult to use his talents creatively in their pain-free society. ...

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «دنیای قشنگ نو»؛ «دنیای شگفت انگیز نو»؛ نویسنده: آلدوس هاکسلی؛ (پیام ، نیلوفر) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز سوم ماه آوریل سال 2000میلادی

عنوان: دنیای قشنگ نو؛ نویسنده: آلدوس هاکسلی؛ مترجم: سعید حمیدیان؛ تهران، پیام، 1352؛ در 268ص؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، نشر واژه، 1368، در 267ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، نیلوفر، 1378، در 295ص؛ شابک: 9644480686؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان انگلیسی - سده ی 20م

عنوان: دنیای شگفت انگیز نو؛ نویسنده: آلدوس هاکسلی؛ مترجم: حشمت الله صباغی؛ حسن کاویار؛ تهران، کارگاه هنر، 1366؛ در 281ص؛

عنوان: دنیای شگفت انگیز نو؛ نویسنده: آلدوس هاکسلی؛ مترجم: رضا فاطمی؛ تهران، سمیر، 1390؛ در 312ص؛

رمانی علمی تخیلیِ است، که در سال 1932میلادی، به قلم «آلدوس هاکسلی»، نویسنده «انگلیسی» منتشر شده‌؛ داستانی خیالی، درباره ی اینکه در سال 2540میلادی، انسانها را کارخانه ها تولید، و اوضاع دنیا ثابت است، و مردمان خوشبخت هستند، از پیری خبری نیست، ...، و در بخشهای پایانی، «هاکسلی» با دیالوگهایی که از نمایشنامه های «شکسپیر»، بازنگاری کرده (عنوان رمان را نیز از نمایشنامه «طوفان» اثر «ویلیام شکسپیر» برگرفته)، و ...؛ انگار هنوز داستان ادامه دارد.؛

نویسنده با شیوه‌ ای سرشار از طنز، و آفرینشهای ادبی، سیر تمدن، و فرهنگ مغرب زمین را، به باد نقد می‌گیرند، و جهات منفی و زیانمند آن را برای جامعه بشری، و کرامت انسانی با واژه های خویش می‌آرایند؛ «هاکسلی» داستان را در ظرف زمانی چند صد سال پس از امروز در خیال خویش می‌پرورد، تا جنبه ی پیش‌گویی، در باب سرشت، و سرنوشت انسان آینده را، به خود گیرد؛ چنانکه مبدا تاریخ را نیز از راه طنز «ب.ف = بعد از فورد» برمیگزینند، زیرا، در جامعه ی مورد اشاره ی ایشان، همه چیز بر مدار کژراهه ی علم‌زدگی، و سلطه ی ماشین قرار دارد، و بی‌تردید در چنان جامعه‌ ای، نقش پیشگامان راه سعادت و رستگاری بشر، در رتبه ی کسانی همچون «هنری فورد» آرفینشگر اتوموبیل، فرو کاسته شده، و انسان‌ها نیز با همه ی بزرگواری‌های خویش، به آدمک‌هایی بدل می‌گردند، و در چند گروه «آلفا»، «بتا»، «گاما» و «اپسیلون» بر حسب ویژگی‌های سازمانی و نوع استفاده‌ ای که از هر گروه انتظار می‌رود، هستند؛ در نظامی از این دست، به‌ رغم اینکه همگی آدمک‌ها، در حقارت اشتراک دارند، گروه های گوناگون، بر اساس قوانین سخت‌گیرانه، و تغییرناپذیر، از هم جدا گشته، و با نگرش طبقاتی شدید، به صورت «کاست» و «آپارتاید» اداره می‌شوند؛ تغذیه ی آنان از راه گوش، و به یاری دستگاه‌هایی صوتی است، که از همان ابتدای تولید، و در شیرخوارگاه، بر روی بالش تعبیه شده، تا در زمان خواب، تلقینات بزرگان را، در گوششان فرو خواند، و چنان ملکه ی ذهن آنان شود، که آن آموزه‌ها را، همچون دستگاه پخش صوت، بی‌اراده بازگو کنند؛ در یک چنین جامعه‌ ای، انسان طبیعی، و برخوردار از مکارم بشری، و انگیزه‌های طبیعی، محکوم به فناست؛ منتقدان برآنند، که «هاکسلی» با طنز تلخ، و بدبینانه ی خویش، هم نظام‌های سرمایه‌ داری، و هم حکومت‌های «کمونیستی»، و به طور کلی نظام‌های توتالیتر را، یکجا آماج انتقاد خویش قرار داده اند؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 24/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 06/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Yun

Rating: really liked it
I first read Brave New World many years (decades) ago in high school, and I remember thinking it was really interesting at the time. Well, I must have been a doofus back then because this reread just didn't live up to expectations. To be honest, my impression now is that it's all a bit of a mess.

First, who exactly are the main characters here? We start following a few people, but end up focusing on someone else entirely. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic, not even the supposedly enlightened "savage" man from outside this world. And this savage man, even though he had a bit of homeschooling in the middle of nowhere, can converse on a superior level with the Controller of Western Europe upon meeting him. (Cue eye-rolling.)

The story relies heavily on Shakespeare quotes to make its point, often devolving into random ramblings for pages at a time. In a whole chapter devoted to discussions on religion, it clearly implies that turning one's back on religion causes a society to melt down into dystopia. (More eye-rolling.)

And on top of that, the part that annoys me the most is its treatment of the female main character. The "savage" calls her a whore every time he feels attracted to her and goes so far as to physically attack her, since it's obviously her fault for tempting him. I know this was written in the 1930s, so maybe this sort of rape-culture thinking was the norm back then, but it doesn't make reading it now any less offensive.

I'll be generous and give it 3 stars for being a classic with some interesting ideas about dystopian society. But if I were to rank it against books out there today, it's not worth more than 2 stars. Womp womp.

Lyn

Rating: really liked it
This set the stage about what a dystopian story should be or not be.

“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.”

First published in 1932, this is timeless and is as relevant today as when it was first written. Sixteen years before Orwell's 1984 but eleven years after We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, this is a high water mark for the genre, many of its themes could be told today. Truth be said, this could be published today and would be just as good, it rises to the challenge and then towers above it.

“If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”

Everyday life makes me think of this book all the time. Huxley does more than describe a bleak and cynical post-apocalyptic or dystopian world, he looks a dystopian resident in the eye and puts before him a mirror to flesh out what is real and unreal. Further, Huxley has turned that same mirror on the reader and we see in his far future fantasy a reality that could be today. Huxley reveals that the seeds of Mustafa Mond and his ilk have fertile ground in our culture and in our souls.

“No social stability without individual stability.”

Finally, Huxely provides a glimpse behind the curtain, we see the false wizard in his machinations. The world that has been crafted for the denizens of Huxley's nightmare landscape is explained fully and matter-of-factly by Mond. Huxley's sermon is delivered as stoically and deterministically as Jonathon Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God".

"You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk."

A must read.

*** 2020 Re-read:

Reading this brilliant work after a few years only just reminded me of not only what an exceptional book it is, but of also how important it is in literature.

“In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World as #5 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for The Observer, included Brave New World chronologically at #53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at #87 on The Big Read survey by the BBC.”
- Wikipedia

Huxley was greatly affected and influenced by economic events in the England of the 1920s and of the need for stability, but at what cost? A trip to America and an exploration of Henry Ford’s autobiography My Life and Work further led him towards the centralized and industrialized world that he created in BNW.

Huxley, perhaps more so than Orwell, has crafted a domain wherein the individual has succumbed to the will of the state. But Huxley’s vision is more subtle and therefore more insidious – the citizens of Huxley’s dystopia are brainwashed and seem genuinely happy. The dehumanizing automation of births and families as well as the somnambulist / hypnotic effects of Soma further create a scenario where out traditional attitudes of right and wring have been displaced.

Most of all in this reading is the characterization of John and of his juxtaposition with him as a product of the savage reservation and of his alienation in the London of the brave new world. In John, Huxley has created a shadow of Miranda from The Tempest, and the civilization he finds is one that he ultimately rejects in favor of the most extreme form of individual choice.

Timeless and important.

Mario the lone bookwolf

Rating: really liked it
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...

Leonard Gaya

Rating: really liked it
Brave New World is a young man's novel, written in the interwar years. Huxley was then living in a collapsing world: a world where the optimist 19th-century dreams of progress, of improved humanity, of a new and superior man, had been shattered in the trench warfare of World War I and were about to be burned amidst the horrors of the concentration camps.

Huxley seems to be sensing that grave danger is looming on the horizon, and he imagines a utopia where a single superstate is ruling the whole planet. The dream of a “superior humanity” has eventually come true, thanks to the extensive use of eugenics and mass cloning (babies in bottles). Not all people get the best genetic formula, however: some of these manufactured humans are reduced to imbecility, perform the lowest functions, and are nonetheless content with their lot. Children, of course, are all brainwashed and conditioned with hypnotic techniques (sleep teaching). There are no families anymore, and sexual promiscuity is pervasive. Adults get a further supply of silly entertainment (Feelies) and drugs (Soma) that renders them docile, keeps them young, and make them love their voluntary servitude. People have lost interest in art and science, and religion has been replaced by Henry Ford’s cult (i.e. assembly line applied to human beings) and occasional orgiastic ceremonies (orgy-porgies). In short, humanity has achieved happiness and reached the End of History.

To some extent, Huxley’s prophecies have become a reality, less than a century later: rational, hierarchical, hyper-efficient and optimised capitalism and cheery consumerism have conquered most of the world. The sexual revolution has indeed taken place — although full sexual libertarianism is still a pipe dream. Pharmacopoeia, narcotics, antidepressants, tranquillisers and rejuvenating treatments are broadly available; as well as irrelevant and mind-numbing 3D entertainment, peppered with commercial slogans. Genetic engineering and biotechnology are everywhere (although not used to select humans as yet).

Brave New World is a novel structured around a set of (rather crude) characters and plots; there is, however, no clear protagonist. Huxley has a witty tongue-in-cheek sense of humour throughout. Some passages even have a purely poetic or musical quality: particularly through the use of Shakespeare’s lines for the character of John Savage, or the cross-cutting technique employed in chapter 3. But by and large, the book feels like a philosophical essay or social satire, in the style of Voltaire’s Candide or Swift’s Gulliver's Travels. Obviously, Huxley had Plato’s Republic in mind, when designing his Alpha / Bêta / Gamma / Delta / Epsilon caste system (he was probably also referring to the school grades: A+ to F, already in use when he was a pupil at Eton College, or even to the caste system in India). Certainly, he remembered Nietzsche’s “Letzte Mensch” from Zarathustra’s prologue: a human type that has indeed invented happiness, comfort and social stability, but ultimately a petty and lethargic sort of humankind. A type of humanity that might well be appealing to us right now, who knows…

Brave New World is obviously a fascinating political statement that spoke to the European crisis of the 1930s. But its visionary impact and influence on speculative fiction cannot be overstated, from Orwell’s 1984 to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, to Atwood's Oryx and Crake, and to Houellebecq’s La Possibilité d'une île.

See also my review of Brave New World Revisited.

Edit: Watched Universal’s 2020 TV series adaptation. It is by and large faithful to the novel’s plot and characters, but ends up taking more and more liberties as the episodes go by. It’s also focusing way more on the entertainment potential of the book (especially the erotica aspects of the orgy-porgies) than on the political debate around the problem of happiness vs freedom. All references to Shakespeare have been removed as well, although the romance is a central part of the show (not so much in the book). Ultimately, Huxley’s philosophical novel serves as the rib cage of the series, but its heart is more like Black Mirror, Westworld, The Matrix or even Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Nonetheless, a pleasant “feely” with some nice eye candy!

Clare

Rating: really liked it
As a teenager I went through a period of reading a vast number of distopian novels - probably all the teenage angst. This is the one that has continued to haunt me however, long after the my youthful cynicism has died it's death. It's basically a book about the utopian ideal - everyone's happy, everyone has what they want and EVERYTHING is based on logical principles. However, there is something very rotten at the heart. It's about how what we want isn't always what we should get. It looks at how state sponsered "happiness" can entirely miss the point. Perhaps, most importantly, it makes the case for individual freedom rather than authoritarian diktat. It should be read hand in hand with Mill's Utilitarianism to get a good idea of the philosophy that inspired it.

Incidentally, I gave this book to my boyfriend as a present for his 18th birthday ( a rather depressing gift I know). At the time he wasn't particularly freaked out by it and said that it didn't hold the same level of dread as say, 1984 or "The Handmaid's Tale". As he's got older however, he's found the idea more and more frightening. Six years later it has more of a sting in the tail for him. I don't know why this should be but I'll hazard a guess that as you get older you're idea of "happiness" becomes perhaps more complex, making the ideal of "Brave New World" even more disturbing.

Fergus

Rating: really liked it
Brave New World says as much about Aldous Huxley as it does about our modern world.

Maybe more.

When he wrote it, Huxley was in the process of losing his inner child. Darling of the Jet Set, he was the literary version of their current idol, Cole Porter.

And in the end, the sophisticated public’s jaundiced taste for quick, fun and outré reads made him disposable - to us all.

And worst of all, to his own deep, dreaming subconscious!

Shy, lanky, shortsighted polymath Huxley was born to a family of Eminent Victorians, and was given ample leisure time to read any book he could get his hands on - which was them all.

They would call him a nerd nowadays.

But his reading and shyness disassociated him from the rough-and-tumble world. He had no fixed anchor.

Like so many of us, he had lost his centre of gravity, or had never had one.

But entre-deux-guerres Europe loved him, and adopted him as one of its own. The darling of the Smart Young Things - as the Catholic Waugh tartly put it - he was witty, caustic and irreverent.

He could do no wrong - except in the eyes of social activists, on one side, and believers on the other.

So it was at the midpoint of his career that he took up his pen against the future in Brave New World. If he couldn’t be serious, he could nevertheless shock.

Problem is, he half-loved his own Utopia. And in later life he moved to the U.S.A. and became an early advocate of the Southern California Lifestyle with its casual gurus and myriad conveniences.

When his beloved wife Maria died of cancer, disconsolate and without moorings, he turned to her much younger caregiver for love - a quality conspicuous by the rarity of its occurrence in his hyper-intellectual heart.

They were married at a no-frills marriage boutique in Nevada. They explored Eastern religions through Vedanta, then a current fad. They attended séances and summoned the ghost of his late wife.

He was very much a faddish man without roots, and much akin in his casual though refined nature to the citizens of the Brave New World.

And too much akin to us struggling souls in the too-fast-forward unforgiving world of 2022.

But Carl Jung used to say that our Shadow will visit us in our dreams if we ignore it in our daily lives...

Huxley bought into the mainstream Freudian POV that the asceticism of the great mystics was mere dumb sexual repression (witness his Late anti-Christian rant entitled The Devils of Loudon - now made newly available on Kindle).

And late in life, close to the time of his own death, Huxley dreamt he was floating in a vast orb containing a marvellous city.

But outside the bubble, brutish crowds were howling with derisive laughter at him - yes, him - the untouchable visionary who penned the great Brave New World!

It’s like that late photo of him at his misunderstood California friend Stravinsky’s recording sessions for his own new severely serial and segmented short compositions.

Huxley marvelled at the capacious mind of the composer of the Sacre, but his small-souled trivial brain had no clue of the older man’s unimpeachable moral integrity.

A wannabe mystic, he was a no-show at the starting gate because he could never focus his thoughts long enough to shore up enough justifications for a undying Faith.

He awoke from that dream in a panic.

Poor, dear lost soul that he was, there were times when even Soma wouldn't help...

And in his quest for new utopias, he had left the rough and tumble Faith of ordinary poor workaday, believing sods out of his equation.

For his advanced calculations noisily and brusquely precluded the one possible healing panacea for his soul - the Simplicity of the Holy Spirit.

For that’s ALL he had ever needed.

Adina

Rating: really liked it
I finally managed to finish the dystopian classics triangle - 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave new World. For me the winner is Brave New World. Although I find the world imagined is less realistic than the other two it is equally tragic.

I finally got that somewhat lost feeling of total happiness when reading a book, that tingle in the pleasure receptors when you find a great book. Even though I recently read many books that I loved I seem to have lost that feeling of satisfaction when being face to face with an IT book. I thought the reason was that I started to read more, a lot more. Before Goodreads I used to read 10-15 book/year max so I had more time to enjoy a book, to get lost in it. Although I was happy that I read more and that I managed to finish books that I wanted to read for a long time the intensity of the feelings that reading stir in me had diminished. I am so elated that I can still get immersed in a book with all my being. I am so happy that I realized the problem is not how many books I read but what I read and the relationship I build with that book/author. I’ll keep reading when/what/how much I want to knowing that from time to time (probably once-twice/year) I will find that book that will make me remember why I read.

When I started BNW I thought that it was going to be another one of those books that you know they are a work of art an appreciate them but in the same time are not very pleasant to read. Something like the Hunger by Hamsun or The Stranger by Camus. The beginning was really uncomfortable, especially the descriptions of the embryos and the erotic child games. Brrr. My hair stood up reading that. However, I quickly got absorbed and loved every second spent reading.