Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Rate: 4.0

What it's about:
Aldous Huxley's tour de force Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a 'utopian' future - where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthesized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.

My thoughts:
At first, Huxley's Brave New World doesn't seem so bad. Drugs and promiscuity are encouraged while solidarity and fidelity are frowned upon. If you're having a bad day, just drop some soma and all your troubles will go away. There's no violence, old age, disease. Everybody seems so gosh darn happy. In fact, you've been conditioned from a very early age to appreciate your role in this society whether you are high or low man on the totem pole.

After a while, the reader sees how these people are not really living at all. How can we truly live a life without experiencing the bad as well as the good. Sometimes we need to see the the awful things in this world to truly appreciate our own lives. But in this Brave New World, if you start questioning society, you may just get yourself a one way ticket to Iceland, or some other island where you can't incite others to start questioning their own roles in society.

This book gets the reader thinking about society today and our own roles in it. Can there really be a Utopia? Is it possible? Somehow I don't think it is. Utopia always seems to turn to dystopia eventually. This book is well deserving of it's status as a classic. I wish it were on a required reading list when I was in high school as it opens up lots of room for good discussions.

"O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beautious mankind is!

O brave new world

That has such people in't!"

-Shakespear's The Tempest