Brave New World By Aldous Huxley

[ChrisC]

After finishing Inversions by Iain M. Banks. Which I thought was very good and I love the culture references. I thought I'd change author for a break from Banks. Although I will be reading The Algebraist by Banks, after Brave New World. What I want to know is this. Is Brave New World like 1984 by George Orwell? Is it a bleak book? Without given anything away, whats it like? Also is Brave New World considered Sci Fi?

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Brave New World is a superb book. One I pick up and read once every couple of years or so. Imagine a bleak controlled world without individuality (mostly) and a conditioned acceptance of control (trying to not give anything away though).

Read it it is great.

 

[spring-peeper]

I read Brave New World when I was around 12-13. It had a profound impact on me and still refer back to it.

I would definitely encourage you to read it.

 

[wiskey]

its a really good book, read it and find out for yourself.

 

[kyser_soze]

BNW is a top book - about the only thing of Huxley's to (IMO) have stood the test of time in it's concepts and conceits. I don't think it's especially well written (IMO it lacks the stylistic flourish and visualisation of 1984, but it's a good look at a utopian dystopa (yes, conrtadictory but you'll see what I mean when you read it) - especially coming to it after Banks' Culture novels (specifically Genar Hoefens feelings about the Culture and his sort-of dissatisfaction with it, in Excession; the whole of Phlebas; the Contact personnel who leave the Culture and stay on their assigned planets in State of The Art)

And let us know what you thought of the Algebraist too - I liked it. It's flawed and overlong, but it's a good introduction to a genuine non-Culture universe that is almost an inversion of The Culture.

 

[In Bloom]

Personally, I thought Brave New World was a bit crap. The whole thing was predicated upon using dystopian fiction to attack an opinion which nobody held. One big strawman from start to finish, IMO. Deeply conservative and not very interesting.

 

[In Bloom]

The film with Leonard Nimoy was alright though

 

[kyser_soze]

Personally, I thought Brave New World was a bit crap. The whole thing was predicated upon using dystopian fiction to attack an opinion which nobody held. One big strawman from start to finish, IMO.

Expand on your middle comment Bloom - I think I know what your'e saying but want to be sure...

 

[In Bloom]

Expand on your middle comment Bloom - I think I know what your'e saying but want to be sure...

Well as I understand it, Brave New World was Huxley's attack on Communism/Socialism, as indicated by the thinly veiled attacks on promiscuity and the strawman of "everybody belongs to everybody else." Also, Huxley attacks materialist analyses of society by (wrongly) conflating it with nihilistic consumerism but offers little real critique of materialism other it not being romantic enough for his personal tastes.

 

[kyser_soze]

Well as I understand it, Brave New World was Huxley's attack on Communism/Socialism, as indicated by the thinly veiled attacks on promiscuity and the strawman of "everybody belongs to everybody else." Also, Huxley attacks materialist analyses of society by (wrongly) conflating it with nihilistic consumerism but offers little real critique of materialism other it not being romantic enough for his personal tastes.

I agree with the second part but not the first - he was a romantic writer for sure, but I always read BNW as an attack on both Systems Of The World - Communism for it's egalitarian ethos, and capitalism for vapid consumerism, acceptance of the strict hierarchy and the doping of society.

I recently re-read Chrome Yellow, and it could be argued that Huxley wanted to put a human face on modernity - he wasn't opposed to promiscuity (IIRC), just as he wasn't opposed to drug use (the guy went out tripping his nuts off on acid), but he was fearful of the human cost of both (promiscuity/low self esteem, and drugs/apathy and tolerance of oppression).

And I laughed my ass off at the film...

 

[ChrisC]

(the guy went out tripping his nuts off on acid)

Wasn't that Timothy Leary. Aldous Huxley had a brief encounter with mescaline, but thats all I think. Could be wrong.

 

[kyser_soze]

Wasn't that Timothy Leary. Aldous Huxley had a brief encounter with mescaline, but thats all I think. Could be wrong.

Will need to check, but AFAIR he liked his acid and was party to the early days (Doors Of Perception and suchlike) and was instrumental in 'rediscovering' the 'potential of hallucinogens to raise and expand conciousness'. (Load of bollocks that is)

 

[CharlieAddict]

if you wanna read something that bends your mind, check out 'the illuminati trilogy' by robert anton wilson.

as for brave new worlds, the only thing in common it has with 1984 is that it centres on a dystopian world. other than that, both books are very different. i loved it and couldn't believe huxley wrote it back in the 30s.

 

[kyser_soze]

as for brave new worlds, the only thing in common it has with 1984 is that it centres on a dystopian world. other than that, both books are very different. i loved it and couldn't believe huxley wrote it back in the 30s.

I think the main reason many of us of a certain age link the two is because they were set as compare and contrast texts in GCSE English Lit about 20 years ago...

Oh, and that 1984 is a better book all round. That's probably the biggest difference...

 

[CharlieAddict]

I think the main reason many of us of a certain age link the two is because they were set as compare and contrast texts in GCSE English Lit about 20 years ago...

Oh, and that 1984 is a better book all round. That's probably the biggest difference...

you did? bloody hell...lucky you!

we read 'talking in whispers' and 'the caretaker.'

1984 better book all round? oof! too close to call. both are great works but orwell as a person was more of a hero.

what i don't get is why critics say 1984 was his bleakest book. have they not read burmese days or animal farm?

 

[Lost Zoot]

I thought it was good, but brave new world revisited is a thousand times better.

 

[ChrisC]

if you wanna read something that bends your mind, check out 'the illuminati trilogy' by robert anton wilson.

I checked The Iluminati Trilogy on Amazon, couldn't find it. Whats the name of the first book?

 

[ChrisC]

It's ok I found it.

 

[kage]

Will need to check, but AFAIR he liked his acid and was party to the early days (Doors Of Perception and suchlike) and was instrumental in 'rediscovering' the 'potential of hallucinogens to raise and expand conciousness'. (Load of bollocks that is)

Huxley was mad on acid, he even had his wife administer LSD IV on his deathbed. That must have been a pretty crazy trip...

 

[keefor]

I haven't read Brave New World for a long time but seem to remember feeling that it started off quite interesting but then it sort of ran out of ideas.

Probably just me but I would have liked to see more development on how society was operating rather than developing the storyline it did.

 

[Col_Buendia]

I'm with the Orwell fans, I don't think BNW is much of a patch on 1984. Read them both recently (1st time for BNW, 1st time in 20yrs for 1984 ) and I was surprised at how shallow BNW seemed in comparison.

 

[spanglechick]

I'm with the Orwell fans, I don't think BNW is much of a patch on 1984. Read them both recently (1st time for BNW, 1st time in 20yrs for 1984 ) and I was surprised at how shallow BNW seemed in comparison.

i disagree with the consensus here - but probably because i don't rate 1984 as a piece of writing at all. I will conceed that the concepts and conceits of 1984 are more thought out and well-developed than those of BNW... but BNW is a more accessable and dynamic piece of writing.

 

[chilango]

1984 is better than Brave New World...

...but the bit about "visiting the savages" in Brave New World is interesting.

We by Yvegeny Zamyatin is better than either though.

 

[Idris2002]

BNW - for an anthropologist the interesting bit is the 'Savage reservation'. Huxley is of course saying that beneath the veneer of high technology, the people of BNW are at least as 'bad' and probably a good deal worse than the savages.

It's John the Savage's liminal position - neither of the reservation or the BNW that makes him the most *human* of the characters in the novel.

At a surface level Huxley is having a go at socialism, but only I think at the elitist, Beatrice Webb/Fabian society version of it. At a deeper level it's a critique of capitalist rationality in its entirety, from the entirely controlled lives of the people to their institutionalised and biologised hierarchy.

It's one of those books you usually read at an age when you're really too young to appreciate and understand it properly.

Anyone read Huxley's Point Counter Point? There's a portrait in if of a fascist-type leader called Webley, who I initially assumed was meant to be Mosley. But I looked at the copyright page, and it turns out PCP was published in 1928, when Mosley was still in the labour party.

And it's true Huxley really was fond of his acid. . .

 

[Col_Buendia]

It's one of those books you usually read at an age when you're really too young to appreciate and understand it properly.

That seems about right to me, having missed the opportunity to read it when I wuz young & impressionable.

I'd say, then, that 1984 improves with age (as a teenager I hadn't a very refined notion of interpellation, power or resistance!), where BNW apparently doesn't.

My 1st contact with BNW was about 15yrs ago when the Ulster Youth Theatre put on a musical version of it. Sort of disturbing to see all these pre-pubescent kids dancing their unrealising way through a critique of contemporary society like that!

 

[Idris2002]

How did they represent the sexual side of the story? And did Big Ian's mob turn up to protest?

 

[kazza23]

BNW is good, but some of his other books are a bit boring. The doors of perception just seems to me a bit like he is just going on about how great acid is, and how the rest of the world is missing out on stuff.

 

[ChrisC]

BNW is good, but some of his other books are a bit boring. The doors of perception just seems to me a bit like he is just going on about how great acid is, and how the rest of the world is missing out on stuff.

The Doors of Perception is about Mescaline not LSD.

 

[Col_Buendia]

How did they represent the sexual side of the story? And did Big Ian's mob turn up to protest?

Tbh, I can't remember any sexiness in the production, given that some of the kids were as young as 11, that was probably just as well Not that they didn't try hard enough back stage! It had that Ciaran McMenamin in it, he was very good already as a young fella. He seemed destined for big things, and then didn't quite make it iirc.

No sign of the Ballymena lynch mob thank god. I do remember them being outside when the Lyric showed Robin Glendenning's play about a public school with two lads, errr, stimulating each other onstage

 

[_angel_]

I'm with the Orwell fans, I don't think BNW is much of a patch on 1984. Read them both recently (1st time for BNW, 1st time in 20yrs for 1984 ) and I was surprised at how shallow BNW seemed in comparison.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was disappointed in BNW and also, found it not to be very well written in terms of evoking a feeling and vision of this world.

The fact that I can't remember very much about it or even name one of the characters in it must say something about it.

A vote for 1984 anytime.