Bryan’s Comments (group member since Aug 22, 2012)

Bryan’s comments from the Utopian and Dystopian Reading Group group.

When I read Huxley's "Brave New World" as a teenager, it sounded pretty good to me.Then I succumbed to the "Oh, but they weren't really human any more" brainwashing. After another 50 years of watching humans being conditioned in different ways, I no longer see being human as a cause for pride.

If you think that our world is already dystopian, I contend that you ain't seen nothing yet. And yes, our chances of making it less awful are not helped by people who think everything is hunky-dory. Nor, in my opinion, by people who separate their rubbish but think that children dying needlessly is not their problem.

You know, R.J., maybe it's because young adults care more about the future than we who are no longer so young.

I think that "One part of being essentially *human* lies in our inescapable death" was part of Huxley's point. If he had spoken the English of today, he could well have added "So deal with it." I haven't seen "In Time" yet [thanks for the recommendation!] but I do remember "Zardoz", in which the immortals had become the "Apathetics" - seen it all, done it all, wanting only release. I don't want to be immortal. Do you?

Coming back to "Brave New World", wasn't Huxley asserting that utopia is impossible for human beings because of the fact that we die? And however much you disguise it by inventing religions that promise after-lives or by thanking those nice people who have just helped society by snuffing it, it remains, from the human point of view, a Bad Thing?

Carla wrote: "'1984' and 'The Handmaid's Tale' were the two books that really got me into dystopian fiction."

Two classics, Carla. 1984 frightened the life out of me when I read it as a boy. I didn't read 'The Handmaid's Tale' till quite recently, because I didn't realise it was dystopian. In a way, it is even more scary, don't you think?

If forced to choose, I would say social satire. However, I think nearly all dystopian fiction contains both "social satire" and "speculative warning".

For me, it was the familiar pair of 1984 and Brave New World. Huxley's book also cut through the religious indoctrination I'd been subjected to. It made me think that if those people in good faith could teach and believe such things, maybe I should re-consider my belief in other strange things which different people in good faith had insisted I accept without question. A recent favourite is Will Self's The Book of Dave, which also is not kind to the socio-political uses of religion.

As someone called Murphy whose granddad helped build the Titanic, and a dystopian author, I have to agree with what you wrote. And as a former copy-editor, I have to say that I have rarely come across such clear expository prose. I've shared your article to Twitter and Facebook. I hope that lots of people read it.