Customer Reviews

All Too Real
Sobering. What was merely creepy 25 years ago in high school now has the frightening force of reality behind it--Huxley's prophecy is coming true. Though most everyone is familiar with the basics of the story, there was a wealth of detail that had escaped my first reading. When the pain is taken away, society becomes a giant feedback loop--seeking nothing but sensation.

Huxley's Brave New World portrays a society devoid of pain and purpose--he argues that his creation is the inevitable result of science untempered by morality. He hints that the exigency that led to the Brave New World was war and one cannot think of a more likely scenario. This is science-fiction that has utterly transcended its genre because of the clarity and accuracy of its vision that an uncontrolled science would lead to tampering with life itself. Birth control, the abandonment of "traditional" morality, recreational drugs without side effects, and genetic engineering were all foreseen by this book from 1932.

The utter triumph of the society is manifested in the fact that there is neither desire to escape nor ability to challenge the status quo. It is interesting to note that though genetic tampering is currently rather benign--we select for good looks, intelligence and hope to create a genome free from annoying defects like proclivity to cancer and other diseases--Huxley argues that you can't make a civilization of alphas thereby affording a justification for the purposeful impairment of the majority of the population. The problem with Huxley's alphas is that they are intelligent enough to overcome conditioning; they have to buy into the system because they are smart enough to know otherwise. If they don't, society banishes them to an island--which, in reality, is a prize bestowed only on those who can appreciate or desire freedom. For example, though well-aware that the society he "controls" has sacrificed art, science and progress, Mustapha Mond decides not to go to the island but instead adopts the idea that the highest goal of mankind is freedom from pain, obligation and choices.

And, presciently, that is the promise of every modern politician that has any success--they wish to bring us a world free from pain and labor, to save us from ourselves. The world is losing an appreciation for the value of pain, the satisfaction of labor and the value of choices. Huxley saw it coming in 1932 and the conclusion that the world is heading down that path becomes inescapable with only the slightest reference to contemporary events.

Some scary stuff
It's really scary to think Aldous Huxley wrote about a fictional world in the early-1930s that was considered really far out when this book was first published, but that is quickly becoming reality everyday. He expressed surprise in a later edition of this book at how quickly that fictional world was materializing during his own lifetime. If only he stuck around a while longer (although physically impossible), he would have seen that world fully materialize even quicker than he could have ever imagined.

I was really freaked out the more I got into the book. Much emphasis is placed on the "Community, Identity, Stability" motto (that was mentioned less than a handful of times in the book), as well as the over-dependence on drugs (soma) to make everything all right, but not enough emphasis is placed on the sexual promiscuity that permeated the fictional, futuristic London (hey, I love sex just like the next person, but not with everyone I look at!). Also, not enough attention is paid to the fact that "feelies" (movies where the audience gets a first-hand experience into the "action" experienced by the characters), along with the soma, and everything else in this future society were all designed to take peoples' minds off the fact that they were being controlled. Is that not how it is nowadays?

Instead of feelies, we have Internet porn, E! (a 24 hour cable channel devoted to celebrity gossip), completely mindless, brain-numbing "reality" shows, the idiot box in general, and an American philosophy of having to "keep up with the Joneses" (as the saying goes) - choosing to live a lifetime of debt in order to have the biggest and most current of everything. It leaves little time to worry about the more important things in life such as how your government is wasting your money everyday, the incompetence of your government as a whole, how your votes really don't count (unless you vote for the candidate the machine favors), etc. Then again, anything political has always been considered "boring" (just like in the "Brave New World").

This is not to say this is everyone, but I find that too many people today regard books with disdain like the people in Huxley's fictional world (especially younger people, who actually proclaim that "reading sucks") - using the same reasoning Mustapha Mond did as to why books are useless. And let's see a show of hands (or, in this case, posts) as to how many people would rather buy a brand new shirt or pair of pants rather than try to repair that rip or sew a button? (And I have been guilty of that in the past).

The thing that shocked me the most was the popular mindset (brainwashing) in the "Brave New World" that being alone is equal to being a weirdo. I'm seeing more and more of that "reasoning" in the mass media nowadays. If someone is a "loner," something is automatically "wrong" with them (I went through the same thing during my school days in the 80s and 90s). If someone's shy they're "stuck up," being aloof is always cause for alarm, and don't even think about wearing a trench coat!

In the "Brave New World," being together with people all the time takes your mind off of all potential problems. Any problems that do come up are to be avoided with a healthy dose of soma and, better yet, with a soma vacation. And, in the end, only certain people can perform certain tasks in life.

I liked the way Huxley didn't tie things up in the end. It's a shame the "Savage" was continually tortured by the hip and happening populace of London up until the very end. The Savage could be anyone who doesn't subscribe to the popular mindset, someone who dares goes against the grain and doesn't back down.

It can't be stressed enough that Huxley was a prophet. "Brave New World," whether people like this or not, *is* the America of 2007. We have the power to reverse that trend, but people (except a few) just don't seem to want to.

Along with George Orwell's "1984" and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," this is an excellent trilogy of a blissfully ignorant future that is fast becoming reality. - Donna Di Giacomo

A Classic Worth the Read - but doesn't blow you away
I'm tired of reading classic books that aren't so classic anymore. So, that's where I'm coming from.

BRAVE NEW WORLD is worth it. Not in the straight narrative 'fun fiction' way, but, if you're an English buff searching through Classics, it's better than like, SILAS MARINER, or TALE OF TWO CITIES. If you're a girl, it's not as good as the Brontes. If you're a guy, it's not as good as say... COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, but, you can kinda only read MONTE CRISTO once. B.N.W. you can go back to (or, you can go to BNW REVISITED).

Anyway, the modern movie parallels would be GATTICA and THE ISLAND. It's better and brighter (and, oddly, sexier) than both those films. It's not as savvy as 1984 by Orwell, but, then again, Orwell had Aldous to read first anyway.

Huxley has the best scene though of the books. As Huxley's recreating how emotionally numb everyone's become, he has this scene where Mond's talking to some of his peeps, explaining Utopia, and peep-1's telling Mond how this one girl rejected his sexual advances once, and Mond asks him how it made him feel:

"It was horrible!" he says.

So... it's kinda funnish. But, in that British sort of wry sort of way. You really have to give yourself over to the conext in this one and, the only drawback is, the context is this glum, drab, middling world. The novel kinda falls victim to its own ability to paint a picture, because, the picture is painted to be like the first line attests:

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories...

I'll catch heck for this, but the best 'evil Utopia' to date is the WATCHMEN graphic novel. Laugh if you want, but ye doth laugh like a fool.

Individuals give meaning to society.
In the post 9/11 world, it has become almost clichéd to remark on the disturbingly prophetic vision of George Orwell. But whilst 'Brave New World' may not have quite the eerily recognisable elements of constant surveillance or a government that maintains power through continuous war against amorphous enemies, it is perhaps a deeper, more philosophical treatise on the relationship between individual and society, and one that is just as relevant to the way that fragile relationship is developing today.

In Brave New World, Marxism and capitalist consumerism have been synthesised, via science, to produce a society where unhappiness has been abolished but which has no other justification than its own pointless existence. People are brought into the world artificially simply in order to produce goods and consume goods. Meaningful relationships between individuals are taboo, art as a conduit for truth has been banned, the function of science is to enable sterile, pain free, pre-determined lives, from the test-tube to the unmarked, unwept for grave.

From the vantage point of 1932 Oxford, Huxley saw the dominant ideologies of his age as being equally crushing to not only the meaningfulness of individual existence, but also to that of civilisation itself. Brave New World can easily be framed as just another treatise on the eternal battle between individual and society, but Huxley presents the conflict in a deeper way, even beyond Orwell's great novel. This is evidenced above all in the fusion of Marxism and capitalism as the stifling creed of his dystopia. These two ideologies, despite their manifest differences, both see the rights of the individual as paramount, freedom from 'exploitation' contrasting with 'freedom to choose'. Huxley shows how both leave the individual less free than ever.

This, of course, is something that has been portrayed in print and film many times in the decades since. But what ensures that the novel remains a timeless classic, is its vision of an alternative relationship between man and state. Although the novel is rightly regarded as celebrating the individual's battle against an oppressive, restrictive society, it also presents culture as an end in itself, the ultimate value of human existence, and in doing so gives society an importance over and above any individual. Huxley asks not so much what is the way to individual happiness or 'liberty', he asks 'why are WE here?' Man is not made for society, nor is society made for man, instead society is what separates us from the animals, creating, through culture, art and science, something greater than itself and yet enabling each individual life to possess a higher meaning. Only, however, if we are allowed to be individuals in the first place. Brave New World is a forewarning of what a society would be like that loses those insights, a society that however, is becoming increasingly recognisable as that of our modern consumerist social democratic nations.

Chilling.
This book sent shivers up and down my spine. Although it was written decades ago, Brave New World is still relevant to today's society. A world where human beings are 'decanted' and then go on to live plasure-driven, drug-induced lives is not totally unfathomable. Particularly creepy ideas were the sleep-teaching and mass-conditioning at the Hatchery. The Bokanovsky groups (identical twins numbering in the dozens that man entire factories) were also unsettling. Come to think of it, almost everything Huxley invents in this book is creepy.

My favorite part was the Alpha-Beta-Gamma-Delta-Epsilon social hiearchy. The continuous use of the word 'beastly' added a touch of humor. I did feel sorry for Bernard at times... in the beginning, that is.