BRAVE NEW  WORLD

Aldous Huxley’s bleak version of the shape of things to come.

To my mind, Brave New World has not withstood the test of time. Written - and read - at the time as a great work of science fiction, portraying a world where eugenics is an accepted part of life, delineating everyone’s position and tasks in society, where happiness is the end all and there is no notion of individuality or difference. Everyone and everything is communal, the idea of self or even parenthood is a repugnance. Into this rigid structure is thrown ‘the savage’ a man brought up on the old beliefs of love, and self-determination - with inevitable disastrous results. Take off the veneer and it’s an obvious swipe against Communism a la 1984. However, Brave New World has not managed to wear as well - what was seen as hard science fiction 60 years ago has been overtaken by fact, with other parts seem horrendously staid and bourgeois. However, it is still a landmark novel and, as such, deserves its place in history. But 1984 is better.