Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In Huxley’s utopianish dystopia, an individual’s fate is determined through a combination of genetic engineering, operant conditioning, and hypnopedia (sleep-teaching.) It’s a different dystopian vision than that of Orwell or Atwood; individuals are drugged and encouraged in unlimited promiscuity in order to pacify them and keep them believing that they are happy (without allowing exposure to alternatives by which they might contrast their lives.) Gone are the arts and religion as we know it, and science exists only as a shadow of its former self.

The book follows the story of a “Savage”, named John, brought from an Indian reservation on which this “Brave new world” is unknown. He cannot understand the “civilized” world, and to its occupants he is an interesting anomaly to be gawked at at cocktail parties.

The book ends on an upbeat note as the reader learns of a third world, a world beyond the Brave New World or the brutally impoverished aboriginal lands.

Everyone should read this book to learn that one can be killed with “kindness” as well as with sternness.

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