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Towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless society--and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs and recreational sex ensure that everyone is a happy, unquestioning consumer; messy emotions have been anesthetized and private attachments are considered obscene. Only Bernard Marx is discontented, developing an unnatural desire for solitude and a distaste for compulsory promiscuity. When he brings back a young man from one of the few remaining Savage Reservations, where the old unenlightened ways still continue, he unleashes a dramatic clash of cultures that will force him to consider whether freedom, dignity, and individuality are worth suffering for.… (more)
zasmine: For Orwell was inspired by it. And Orwell's 1984 is as much of a prize as it.
li33ieg: 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451: 3 essential titles that remind us of the need to keep our individual souls pure.
Ludi_Ling: Really, the one cannot be mentioned without the other. Actually, apart from the dystopian subject matter, they are very different stories, but serve as a great counterpoint to one another.
Anonymous user: It's essential to read Huxley's and Orwell's books together. Both present the ultimate version of the totalitarian state, but there the similarities end. While Orwell argues in favour of hate and fear, Huxley suggests that pleasure and drugs would be far more effective as controlling forces. Who was the more prescient prophet? That's what every reader should decide for him- or herself.… (more)
artturnerjr: If you read only one other dystopian SF story, make it this one (well, you should read 1984, too, but you knew that already, didn't you?).
leigonj: Haldane's ideas of eugenics and ectogenesis, which are laid out alongside others including world government and psychoactive drugs, strongly influenced Huxley's novel.
I'm so happy that I decided to read this book, because it was simply incredible! I still can't believe it was written in 1930, because it is extremely modern; it describes the world that doesn't exist yet, but we may almost see it.
I really enjoyed the first part of the book, Bernard and Lenina and their almost love story were great - but I have to admit that I was not a huge fan of John the Savage. We saw London and the new society through his eyes, but John is like us, so it seemed a bit boring. I don't know what to think about the ending, I have a few theories what the author wanted to show us, but I'm not sure. I would be much happier if it ended on the discussion between John and Mustafa.
I loved this book, it really made me think. In my opinion everybody should read it.
Brave New World is the predecessor dystopian novel that spookily predicted a lot of things before George Orwell's infamous 1984. Unlike the morbidly unforgiving and grimy environment that Orwell paints in 1984, this novel here is the polar opposite; Huxley creates a civilization that is uncomfortably sterile and happy. Happiness is presented in a very peculiarly logical perspective which justifies the way that that particular civilization is run.
However, there are some outliers in this civilization and the story mainly revolves around these characters. This was also the first novel that I have read which kind of switched the main character towards the middle of the story and that was an odd transition for me.
Although there were a lot of scarily accurate predictions about our incapability to face obstacles and solitude over the preference of indulging in instant gratifications which only temporarily numbs our pain, the narrative of the novel bored me a little. It personally felt quite tedious to get through. And maybe that's just because I lack the imagination to really picture the dystopian society that Huxley was trying to portray.
This novel is considered to be a classic and if you are into dystopian novels, definitely give this a try as this novel is arguably the one that started them all. ( )
Not for me. Made it halfway through the book and still found it completely uninterestng so I decided to give up. Felt no attachment to any characters and I didn't care for the writing style. ( )
Aldous Huxley skillfully blends social critique with philosophical inquiries on the cost of sacrificing individuality for stability and technological advancement.
Les utopies apparaissent bien plus réalisables qu'on ne le croyait autrefois. Et nous nous trouvons actuellement devant une question bien autrement angoissante : comment éviter leur réalisation définitive ?… Les utopies sont réalisables. La vie marche vers les utopies. Et peut-être un siècle nouveau commence-t-il, un siècle où les intellectuels et la classe cultivée rêveront aux moyens d'éviter les utopies et de retourner à une société non utopique moins 'parfaite' et plus libre. (—Nicholas Berdiaeff)
Dedication
First words
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.
Quotations
Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.
..."What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
"I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin ... I'm claiming the right to be unhappy". "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." ... "I claim them all".
"All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny."
"No civilisation without social stability. No social stability without individual stability."
Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those unnecessary old barriers.
The social body persists although the component cells may change.
It was the sort of idea that might make the higher castes believe that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.
The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get.
Science is dangerous. It must be chained and muffled.
People believe in God because they have been conditioned to believe.
But everyone belongs to everyone else.
Some men are almost rhinoceroses; they ron’t respond properly to conditioning. (Henry)
I’d rather be unhappy than have the false, lying happiness you were having here.
Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science.
But truth’s a menace, science is a public danger.
He would have liked to speak, but there were no words.
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...
I’m claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.
Towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless society--and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs and recreational sex ensure that everyone is a happy, unquestioning consumer; messy emotions have been anesthetized and private attachments are considered obscene. Only Bernard Marx is discontented, developing an unnatural desire for solitude and a distaste for compulsory promiscuity. When he brings back a young man from one of the few remaining Savage Reservations, where the old unenlightened ways still continue, he unleashes a dramatic clash of cultures that will force him to consider whether freedom, dignity, and individuality are worth suffering for.
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Book description
Huxley's bleak future prophesized, in Brave New World was a capitalist civilization, which had been reconstituted through scientific and psychological engineering, a world in which people are genetically designed to be passive and useful to the ruling class. Huxley opens the book by allowing the reader to eavesdrop on the tour of the Fertilizing Room of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning center, where the high tech reproduction takes place. Bernard Marx (one of the characters in the story) seems alone, harboring an ill-defined longing to break free. Satirical and disturbing, Brave New World is set some 600 years into the future. Reproduction is controlled through genetic engineering, and people are bred into a rigid class system. As they mature, they are conditioned to be happy with the roles that society has created for them. Concepts such as family, freedom, love, and culture are considered grotesque.
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