Brave New World

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Summary: A Collectivist Dystopian Novel
Review: This book isn't quite as good as 1984 in my view... but it illustrates the horrors of collectivism trampling over the individual. In this bizzare world of genetic experimentation, the individual is effectively 'lobotomized' into the collective.

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Summary: Brave New World- A Glance at a Terrible Future
Review: Brave New World excellently depicts a future that very well may happen, a terrible future that shows mindless masses and an immpossible-to-break caste system. People are grown in "Hatcheries" like plants, and are conditioned for death and show no remorse at a fellow mans passing away because there is no individual in this society. "The World Controllers" believe this to be pure happiness and think that it's citizens would never leave but they fail to see the difference between pleasure and happiness and the striving of the human mind to be individualic.

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Summary: Masterpiece!
Review: I had to read this book for school, usually I hate the books I have to read for school, but in the case of Brave New World I was very pleasently surprised. Brave New World is an awesome book that was written about 70 years ago, but is still set in the very distant future and still has an effective message today. This book is set in a utopian future where the entire planet is one nation and almsot everyone is happy. The people are kept happy by having a view of sex as something commonplace and with many people; they are also kept happy by a halucionogenic drug that everyone takes called soma. The book portrays that author's views on almost every aspect of society (religion, sex, science, ect.) and is the sort of book that can have many different interpretations. Brave New World is the kind of book that once you read the first chapter you want to keep reading just to see what happens next. So far, this is one of my favorite books, and I would definately recommend it to almost everyone.

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Summary: Maybe the best dystopic novel.
Review: Quite simply, this novel was as perfect as could be in its premise, ideas, themes, and characters. The succinctness of the narrative style is very much effective. One of its strenghts was the genuine feeling I had while reading it that it was written in the time and world of its setting. this makes it more than a mere political pamphlet, a la 1984. A classic and a must-read. A prophetic vision of the "last man."

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Summary: The Thinking-Man's Novel
Review: This book is a literary masterpiece. It depicts a future world so barren and so devoid of promise that the only thing scarier than it is the fact that it's already coming true. The book is comparable to (although very different from) Orwell's 1984. No use comparing them, as many have done. They are both great books, and should be read by everyone.

That said, Brave New World is not for everyone. Sorry to be frank, but an idiot cannot read this book. I know two immature people who started reading the book (and didn't even make it through the first chapter) that said it was "retarted". Okay, so there. If you're gonna read this book, do it right. Don't read it while watching TV or listening to the radio. You have to read it on it's own and read it slowly, to truly understand it. Because it can be quite confusing at times. For example, early on in the book there is a part where two different scenes are taking place simultaneously, and the character's thoughts from each of the scenes are spoken, but with no note of who is saying them. You have to be really paying attention to the book to get anything out of it. And yes, it does have very deep meanings. Read this if you are looking for something a little more thought-provoking and serious than your usual run-of-the-mill action novel.

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Summary: A different viewpoint
Review: It seems that I have a very different interpretation of this book than others do. I suppose Huxley meant for it to be a condemnation of the World State utopia. But I don't see it that way. I see the novel much more as a tragedy of the human spirit.

Huxley paints a picture of a world where almost everyone is happy and content. Why is this so bad? What no one ever really seems able to explain is why a life of misery and hardship is truly better than life in the World State. WE may not find satisfaction in it, but maybe that's just a product of our own masochistic minds. Why condemn those that do find satisfaction in it? Why must we drag them into our pit? I see in these reviews reminders of the way that the natural humans in the novel shun John. The World State is "different" and must therefore be attacked- never mind that almost all of its inhabitants are perfectly fine with their lives. That doesn't matter! They MUST be made to see that pain is good! What?

For me, the center of this novel is the tragedy of John- a man unable to live anywhere. A man torn to shreds by his own soul, and then turned into an amusement by society. THAT, to me, is the heart of the book. That sometimes there is no right and wrong- there is only the unbearable fact that some people simply aren't made for the times or culture that they're born into. What do they do? How do they survive? Unfortunately, in John, we see the fate of so many great and original thinkers.

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Summary: Chillingly Prescient Satire On What We Are Becoming!
Review: As critic and best-selling author Neil Postman points out so well in the introduction to his book "Amusing Ourselves To Death", we have congratulated ourselves prematurely by figuring we made it past the totalitarian nightmare state depicted in George Orwell's gripping cautionary tale "1984". Perhaps, Postman suggest, we should remember another visionary totalitarian nightmare scenario and use it to critically examine the contemporary state of social and psychological well-being. Of course he was referring to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World, written before Orwell's by 15 or so years, and even more frightening in its own way in the world it describes. More and more, that frightening vision looks like our contemporary world.

Picture his ironic portrait of a populace doped into Nirvana on "soma" (read Prozac and Zoloft), isolated and diverted by petty preoccupations in mindless trivial pursuits (read video games and internet surfing to all the porno sites), oblivious to anything not directly pertaining to themselves and totally unaware of the degree to which they are being socially, economically, and politically co-opted. Beginning to sound more familiar? Remember, says Huxley, brute force is not the only method an oligarchy can use to influence, manage, and finally control our hard-won freedoms and liberties; it can be done with over-indulgence and the deliberate fertilization and promulgation of apathy through self-absorption, as well.

Even Huxley says (circa 1960, almost 30 years after the original publication) in the preface of the revised version of the book that he is alarmed as to how quickly the sort of events he figured might take a hundred years such as the appearance of political internationalism and transnational corporate entities are already arising and beginning to control more and more of the substance of our social, economic, and political lives. Just how much do we know other than what we hear and see on television, for example? Yet the electronic media is owned and managed by transnational corporations. Ever wonder why we never heard much muckraking news coverage of the NAFTA or GATT deals even though many recogized the two bills would radically change the nature of international trade? Perhaps the transnationals didn't want too much hype or fuss. Starting to feel uncomfortable yet? Still, people keep insisting this was just a whimsical work of fiction, that it was a parable, that he really wasn't serious.

Want to find out more? Read this book, but do so slowly, taking notes, recognizing how many contemporary parallels there are to each of the "whimsical details" he conjures up, and then figure out in your own mind how very close he was to prognosticating just how far we have come toward the "Brave New World" in which everyone's soul and awareness is for sale. The kids are wowed by the recent movie The Matrix", yet few appreciate just how much of a fabled existence we are already living in. No pain, no sorrow, no trouble of any kind. Instead, we have our individual and collective consciousness "managed" pharmaceutically; our psyches eased into blithering bliss with "soma", our diminishing attention spans sidetracked and occupied by petty diversions and endless entertainments. Pass me the corndogs, honey!

But, hey! Don't touch that dial; Regis is on! They may retry OJ! What did Bill Clinton really do with that cigar? Have you seen the latest news about the stock market? Did you get any of that new beer they're advertising? it's supposed to make me a real ladies man....What's the latest gadget? Can I buy one on-line? By the way, where are the kids? Hell, never mind, just turn up the volume; I think I know the answer to that question Regis just asked... Meanwhile, folks, our awareness of what is going on around us, our rights and our liberties are being power-washed away, obliterated, and we cannot even see it happening in front of us. We are diverted, distracted, content in our own little worlds. So welcome to our nightmare. Better beware; it just looks like Nirvana. It's really another "Brave New World".

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Summary: "...Oh, brave new world, that has such people in it!..."
Review: A very different look at an Orwellian nightmare, a very 1984-esque negative utopia, depsite the fact it was written some 12 years before 1984. John Savage's outlook an "Civilazation" is very true, that there should have been more emotion. No respect for the dead (death conditioning), no deep relationships, in fact, there's a promotion of promiscuity. Lenina is the perfect World State citizen, and is proud of her pneumatic way of life. Hoorah for John Savage and Bernard Marx!

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Summary: Decent writing but confusing thesis
Review: This had the potential to be a good book and Huxley certainly wasn't a bad writer for his day, but his main purpose in this book seems to be to get a message out, and I'm not sure I can buy that message. Basically the thesis is that it's good to be unhappy. The main characters are sick that this world has no unhappiness and they want the right to be unhappy. I cannot understand this since I would rather be happy than not. If this was just a satire about an immoral modern society, then I could understand. His predictions certainly are not too far off the map. If you are curious, try this book, but personally I did not find it enlightening.

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Summary: Viva Huxley!
Review: Aldous Huxley's genius is fully revealed in this wicked satire, which in addition has become an uncannily accurate look at trends in the technology and society of our own time. There are so many points in this book where you are ready to laugh and shudder at the same time. While there are many frivolous puns and jokes scattered throughout, not to mention ridiculously overblown character interactions, the message is ultimately quite serious. We are still prostrating ourselves at the feet of corporations which claim to be advancing the cause of science, being "connected" and "happy" is now more important than anything, and journalistic ethics have indeed evaporated. This novel is in some ways the best portrait of the 1990s yet written--our own contemporary writers, for the most part, are too inhibited or ignorant to say what's really going on.