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Loading... Brave new world (original 1932; edition 1980)by Aldous Huxley
Work InformationBrave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. It's pretty insane that this was written in 1932, given how realistic and currently relevant the concepts are. I haven't read a lot of dystopian stuff in a while, but this checked most of the boxes. Eerie, believable, forces you to think about humanity and where we are going. Honestly I didn't follow the story fully, partially because the characters were clearly just a vehicle for the ideas, and partially because I listened to this while doing other things, but the story itself was passable (and not a strong negative for the book). Worth a read, probably for everyone. A reread for my book club 😉 I first read this book as a tween/teen, with the reverence appropriate when reading an Important Classic. Thankfully, I don’t do this any more. I also have to confess that the vicious satire flew right over my teen head (not surprising, really). The satire aspect was what I enjoyed the most this time. (What does this say about being an adult?😆) Henry Ford worship? Hilarious. Both polyamory and chaste monogamy get crucified, and so do religion and atheism. This world’s Solidarity Services with their Solidarity Hymns read like a pimped up version of a corporate team building exercise. (“Orgy-porgy!”) Naturally, we will go to a darker place with this by the end. Otherwise, this book is a thought experiment that is trying to be a novel. Sometimes it succeeds (I liked the description of John’s childhood, for example). The dystopian society, with its castes, genetic predestination and conditioning, is quite horrifying. Everyone is happy, though (oh, the irony), they love their place as this or that cog in a society’s machine. They also get soma, the happy drug (I thought of our social media fixes). I do have questions: 🤔 Giving your entire population access to a happy drug that apparently can kill you if you overdose enough is a bad, bad idea. Sure, the government controls the access, but has the author ever met a drug addict? How is this dystopia still functioning? 🤔 People are conditioned not to have close relationships with anyone, no intense emotions. Considering what we know about humans as social animals and emotional support that children need growing up, this should be a society of psychopaths. Ouch. I do like my dystopias to be more realistic, you know. The “brave new world” has taken sexual freedom to extreme. Monogamy is a very very weird thing, nobody does this, “everyone belongs to everyone else.” Fair enough. But guess what, women are sex objects, they are ready to jump at any and every man, and they enjoy it, too, because conditioning. (Also, only the men seem to fly those helicopters the characters are always swishing about in. Women don’t have the skills, I suppose.) This dystopia is every macho’s wet dream, my friends! Please don’t ever use the word “pneumatic” in conversation with me. Those who have read the book will know what I mean. As is usual in thought experiment books, the characters are not very interesting. They are vehicles that take the author’s ideas forward. Since A Brave New World was written in the 1930’s, some things have aged badly. Apparently “Negro ovaries” produce way more clones than the Caucasian ones. Gaah. Someone is described as an “octoroon”. What is that? I consulted a dictionary – “a person who is one-eighth black by descent.” Ouch. So, it was a thought-provoking reread, but there is no love lost between the book and me. I did get some cool quotes out of this: “And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.” “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.” “In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you are claiming the right to be unhappy.” I have wanted to re-read this book for some time as I read it during my teens and had forgotten a lot of the details. This cautionary tale of the perils of genetic engineering has dated a little but the story still packs a punch. I haven't devoured a book like this for a long time. Well worth a second look, or a first look if you haven't read it. Belongs to Publisher SeriesAve fénix (185) Blackbirds (1996.3) — 30 more Fischer Bücherei (26) Fischer Taschenbuch (26) Harper Perennial Olive Editions (2010 Olive) Keltainen kirjasto (40) Limited Editions Club (S:41.07) Le livre de poche (0346) Penguin Modern Classics (1052) Perennial Library (P466) The Phoenix Library (92) Rainbow essentials (22) Zephyr Books (15) Is contained inHas the adaptationIs abridged inIs replied to inHas as a studyHas as a supplementHas as a student's study guideHas as a teacher's guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
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. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.912Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Tip: push through the first chapter. It gets much easier to read after that. ( )