Brave New World in Easley Library Bookworms

Mar 15, 2025 Werner rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, classics, books-i-own

This novel and George Orwell's 1984 (which would be published some 17 years later) became the 20th century's best-known dystopian novels; but they represent contrasting visions, and the contrast is instructive. Both depict centralized, standardized and "rationalized" future societies dictatorially ruled by small, self-perpetuating elites who control and manipulate the populace, to its detriment. But the members of the Inner Party in 1984 know perfectly well that their rule is detrimental; they w This novel and George Orwell's 1984 (which would be published some 17 years later) became the 20th century's best-known dystopian novels; but they represent contrasting visions, and the contrast is instructive. Both depict centralized, standardized and "rationalized" future societies dictatorially ruled by small, self-perpetuating elites who control and manipulate the populace, to its detriment. But the members of the Inner Party in 1984 know perfectly well that their rule is detrimental; they want to make their subjects suffer as a self-gratifying exercise of pure power, and to enforce their rule they rely pretty much on the big stick of coercive force and torture (though they use brainwashing and propaganda as well). Huxley's autocrats, on the other hand, are quite certain that they're genuinely serving their subject's "happiness;" measured solely by the absence of uncomfortable or dissatisfied feelings (of course, to eliminate these, they also have to eliminate such old-fashioned things as freedom, romantic and familial love, religion, social mobility, and human creativity); and while they can use the stick as well --troublemakers wind up getting exiled to islands like Iceland or Samoa-- their main reliance is on the carrots of social conditioning, mental programming while its objects are asleep, and use of drugs and sex as opiates.

While we're mainly in the realm of sociological science fiction here, there is some technological SF as well. All humans in Huxley's World State develop in incubators from eggs extracted from the surgically removed uteruses of fertile females (only about 30% of women in this society are fertile, the rest being sterilized in the incubators by doses of male hormones), which are then artificially fertilized and induced, by X-rays and other processes, to divide in the same way that produces identical twins, except on a scale that generates up to 96 identical siblings from one egg. These mass-produced offspring are then divided into classes on the basis of mental ability and physical perfection, designated by Greek letters; the highest class, the Alphas, being allowed to develop normally, the progressively more numerous lower other classes, designed to do the more boring or physical work, being artificially stunted to various degrees by oxygen deprivation. (Like his brother Julian, Huxley was actually sympathetic to the idea of eugenics; what he's depicting here is its opposite, deliberate inducing of birth defects in the brain, etc. to make the victims subservient.)

But (although it's improbable on the face of it, but necessary to Huxley's plot), the World State has allowed at least one cultural enclave of pre-dystopian humanity to survive, a Pueblo Indian reservation in what is today the Southwestern U.S. There, human beings are still conceived and born naturally, marriage and family life still exists, people age naturally and suffer disease (in the World State, they're kept young-appearing until they die, but they don't usually live long beyond 60), they practice a syncretistic mix of Native American paganism and Christianity, and some books still survive --protagonist John only knows of one, the plays of Shakespeare, but he knows that one well and quotes it often. Though he was born and raised here, he doesn't fit in well; he's the son of Linda, a fertile World State female whose birth control failed her and resulted in the "disgrace" of natural pregnancy. Early on here, circumstances will give him the opportunity to visit the world of his mother's origin, so we'll experience that dysfunctional society mainly through his eyes, as well as those of a few of its citizens that he mainly interacts with. All of these characters are well drawn and believable in their context, and their interactions give a human face and plot structure to what's very much a novel of ideas. But it's not a spoiler to suggest that the mutual culture shock here is not likely to be positive for everybody, and that this won't be a feel-good read.

Not every reader loves the plotting of this novel, and most, including myself, find some significant fault with it. As it happens, that judgment was shared by the older Huxley himself, who in the Preface to the 1946 Harper and Row second printing that I read, admitted that "Its defects as a work of art are considerable." (Since this has serious spoilers, it's better read as an afterword.) He chose to let it stand as written, rather than try to re-write it; but noted that its "most serious defect" is that though neither the World State nor the reservation are really optimal societies for human flourishing, they're the only two alternatives he presented here. His older and wiser self would have offered a third one, a via media in which political and economic power is decentralized, science and technology are controlled by humans for humanistic ends rather than the reverse, and the ultimate goal is human spiritual development, not strictly materialistic and engineered "happiness." (Though his critique of the trends already leading in the direction of the World State is based on Eastern religious thought --he eventually embraced Hinduism-- it's a critique that would be shared by classical Christians, and believers in other monotheistic faiths.) By 1946, though, he wasn't very confident of humanity's opting for that third alternative, and feared that the "horror" of the World Controllers' "Utopia" might be visited on us in just a few generations, rather than 600 years into the future. (In our present, of course, it's not unlikely to be a grim reality in our own lifetimes, and even more likely in the lifetimes of our kids.) ...more

28 likes · Like · see review

Jun 08, 2010 Crystal rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, audiobooks, dystopian, classics

I started this book several years ago and finally found the opportunity to get back to it. Considering the time in which it was written, it is a quite visionary and imaginative. I've been enjoying dystopian literature when I want to escape these days, or call it for pleasure, and so as a responsible reader, I felt the need to visit a classic in the genre. :-) Huxley was influenced by the times, and the new ideologies in the early twentieth century. Industrialization, mechanization, Freud, and ev ...more

Like · see review