Will I love Brave New World?

Brave New World is perhaps the little brother to the more famous dystopian novel 1984. I reread this book now at age 57 after last reading it at age 17. As a teenager, I was intrigued by the cool world building and inventive use of eugenics and hypnopaedia. As a mature adult, I was immediately struck by how much the book is a polemic on traditional sexual and romantic morays and also on consumerism and technology. Huxley’s society is focused on comfort, entertainment, pleasure, and immediate gratification. But happiness without suffering has no meaning! Art, pain, love, and other struggles… show more.

I used this book to relieve the boredom of a long daily commute.

Instead of looking out of a train window at the same old scenery I'd passed a thousand times before, I was now taken to a dystopian society in which everything which I had taken for granted about family life was turned upside down. Where humans are manufactured to a specification instead of being born. A new pseudo religion where everyone makes the sign of the ‘T’, to signify their devotion to the original Ford Model T, which was the first vehicle to be manufactured on an assembly… show more.

It took me over twenty years to finish this book; I hated the first chapter that much. Every time I tried to read it, I gave up before even reaching the second chapter. When I finally pushed through, it was well worth it. Ironically, within that time frame, many of the darker dystopian narratives about pleasure and the illusion of freedom seem to have come true.

I was especially fascinated by the second protagonist, John the Savage. His alienation from the world into which he is suddenly submerged is deeply relatable. The struggle between the self and a society one… show more.

This story and its questions of eugenics and our place in society really horrified me, not because it was unbelievable, but precisely because it was far too real. The genetic superiority/inferiority, coupled with social indoctrination into our “advanced” society, made me meditate a great deal on what it means to be human.

What are humans without societal pressures? The way Huxley looked at the costs of freedom was really compelling. And in so many ways, he accurately predicted the destructive side of the social microscope that we all live in today under social media.

Perhaps you read this one in school, but most haven’t revisited the work since. I urge you to do so! People passionate about innovation need to keep humans foremost in their minds, not the machines (of any sort) that they create.

Huxley’s tale is famous because it’s both simple and profound. It’s also remarkably prophetic. As we focus intently on creating the new, this book reminds us of the bigger picture and calls into question the overall endeavor.

Early in my career, I was responsible for one of the world’s first smartphones. It was a wonderful achievement. But this book… show more.

Does this book qualify today as non-fiction? Everything about this tale is eye-opening and applicable to our present. Written during the Great Depression, this is a must-read for anyone who has a feeling that not everything is what it seems.

I adore the gripping narrative, notable arcs, and subtle humor, which give this stark tale some needed levity. I always come away from this book with a lot of questions: How can we as a civilization do better? How did Aldous Huxley so accurately portray life in the 21st century? If I had to build a bookshelf of must-reads for… show more.

If you haven’t read this book since high school, reread it! I’ll cheer you on.

At the risk of overusing the word "visionary" in this list, I often think—too often?—about this 1949 letter that Huxley wrote to George Orwell, in which he challenged the dystopian vision Orwell wrote in 1984.

“Within the next generation,” Huxley predicted, “...the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and… show more.

The world Huxley describes in his 1932 novel is neither brave nor new. People are classified according to their intelligence, and fed into a system governed by a strict hierarchy. Sound familiar?

Not as bleak as some books set in dystopian worlds, but just as chilling for the brutish, sterile existence even the most favoured enjoy within the World State. Written as totalitarian movements were gaining strength around the world, this story of the struggle for individuality and the value of freedom is perhaps even more relevant today.

Reading the first pages of Brave New World is like falling down an elevator shaft. Once you begin, you cannot stop.

The people readers meet in Brave New World are, so to speak, content, fat, and happy. Enter John, someone who grew up outside the dystopian utopia and is not happy. Instead, he is disturbed by the swarm of narcissists that surrounds him. He feels loss. Loss of nature. Loss of simple kindness.

Like all the movie adaptions of this great work, he sees prolific vacuousness. Huxley uses John to illuminate the dark places of a future that uses technological… show more.

Brave New World really captures the societal risks associated with a technologically enhanced world. 

While Orwell describes the authoritarian risks of technology, Huxley looks at the disturbing ways that consumerism and capitalist culture can drive social control enhanced by technology. Hyper-sexualisation, pointless consumerism, eugenics, and drug fuelled hedonism, the world Huxley paints flags risks with our current tech-driven world in ways we cannot ignore. 

Like 1984, the resonance of Brave New World in modern society was deeply troubling and particularly poignant examples pepper my own book.