Brave New World
Brave New World (1932) is a novel by British author Aldous Huxley, which takes place in 2540 A.D., referenced as AF 632 for the number of years “after (Henry) Ford” in honor of his mastery of the assembly line. This 63,766-word novel is generally regarded as dystopian science fiction in which the effects of an overemphasis on mass production and consumerism are seen. In the novel, Henry Ford is worshiped as a deity, and drug taking and free love are encouraged.[1] The last shows Huxley's insight that unfree societies tend to use sexual "freedom" to make their subjects forget that they do not enjoy true freedom. In that regard, Brave New World is a stronger and more accurate dystopian novel than Nineteen Eighty-Four, which assumes the opposite,[2] since it is Huxley's insight that more closely matches the practices of real-world tyrannies.
However, procreation is strictly controlled by the state via genetic engineering, with all humans classified into one of five castes depending on their intelligence and labor. The majority of the plot centers around one member of the Alpha caste: Bernard Marx, who (due to an accident) is below-average in his caste, and his association with "John", member of a "Savage Reservation" outside the society (the product of an unplanned pregnancy between a high-ranking official and a woman from the society) and his desire to visit the society.
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[3]
Huxley would write two follow-ups to the work: Brave New World Revisited (1958), in which he believed that society was reaching the state of his original work faster than he had thought (due primarily to "overpopulation"; though in the interim he had converted to a form of Hinduism), and Island (1952), a Utopian manifesto which would be his final published work in his lifetime.
The work has been adapted into two films (one in 1980 airing on the BBC, and another in 1998 airing on NBC), several radio airings, one theatre production, and a short-lived television series in 2020.
See also
- Survivalist fiction: Dystopia
- Big government Welfare state leads to Nanny state, leads to Police state
- Britannica analysis of this novel
- Liberal totalitarianism
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
