Modern Classics: Brave New World

Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley is, like most science-fiction about the society of its day. It presents us with a dytopian vision of civilization where drugs and promiscuity abound and where the public is entertained by feelies - the equivalent to 1930s Hollywood talkies.

The novel is set on 632 years after Henry Ford brought us the first car manufactured solely by mass-production, Model T. The World State is a stable civilization where all citizens are test tube babies who are conditioned since infancy to take a determined place within society. World Controllers are ultimately in charge of this society where citizens are handed out a drug called soma and communal activities (including sex with as many partners as possible) are encouraged and where solitary pursuits have been abolished. All in the name of stability and happiness.

There exist Reservations where the indians live out of any contact with civilization. This among other reference seem evindence that Huxley got at least part of his inspiration in modern-day America, even though the book is largely set in England. One day, non-conformist Bernard takes, Lenina, a girl he is obscenely growing rather fond off - this is a world were monogamy does not even exist as a concept - to a Reservation. There they come across Linda who got lost many years before in a visit with the now World Controller, Mustafa Mond, and her son John (finding herself far from civilization she could not abort the child as any civilized girl would have done). John has a vision of the world he has obtained from reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare (something unthinkable in the World State) and listening to his mother's stories about civilization.

John and Linda are brough back to civilization. Linda dies soon after and after a confrontation with Mustafa, John settles down in the south of England as a hermitage.

Even though this novel is much less shocking now than I imagined should have been when it was first published, it is still a fascinating novel of ideas.