Brave New World [Mass Market Paperback]

It's fashionable and, I think, considered "deep" to read a book like this and say "how prophetic" or "look, it's actually happening!" It's also disingenuous. Many reviewers have said something like "see, people today take drugs and watch silly movies for escapist entertainment -- Huxley's Utopia is just around the corner!" But people in Huxley's day also took drugs (he specifically mentions cocaine and alcohol abuse) and partook of the escapist entertainment of their day. The crux of Huxley's dystopian vision wasn't free love or happiness through chemicals -- these were just enablers, like Roman bread and circuses -- but the conditioning, since before birth, of each person to fill a pre-ordained role in society; in effect, the elimination of free will regarding one's lot in life. Thankfully, this nightmare is no closer today than it was in Huxley's time -- indeed, with Communism and the attendant evils of Stalinist-era collectivization all but dead, it's more remote than ever.

The Brave New World is a sort of Utopia, where humans are not born to mothers; they are bred in bottles and slowly travel by way of a huge conveyor belt through various machines during the gestational period. Those babies who will become astronauts spend a majority of time upside-down in the bottles, and those who will work in the jungles are submitted to a higher than normal temperature throughout the process. The embryos which are destined to be in one of the lower classes (Epsilons or Deltas) are purposefully deprived of oxygen so that they will not be "born" too intelligent for their class. In light of the current progressions that we have made with cloning and genetic alteration, it seems that Huxley has shown us one distinctly possible direction that society could wind up taking...

The book begins with a tour through the "decanting" factory.. recently fertilized eggs are artificially multiplied in the "Bokanovsky Process", which can create almost 100 identical embryos from a single egg. The lower classes will be multiplied to the highest degree, while the Alphas (the upper administrative class) will be individuals. The tour continues up to the nurseries where the children are conditioned every day to enjoy their lot in life. Some of this conditioning is done through aversion therapy, while some of it is drilled into the childrens' heads while they sleep. This sort of conditioning is what leads to a perfectly controlled world. (The controlled drug called Soma which is distributed faithfully to the masses doesn't hurt, either).

It is easy to determine which caste one person is in by the color they are wearing; each class wears a different color. The classes range from Alpha (highest) down to Beta, Gamma, Delta, and finally Epsilon. Deltas, for example, wear only khaki and are conditioned to hate books so that they will not waste their time reading. Betas, by contrast, are conditioned to be glad they're smart, but not as smart as Alphas because Alphas work too hard.

The older folks are so ingrained with these thoughts that they know nothing but happiness with their lives, regardless of whether they are the hard labor force or in one of the upper classes. However, the people in charge, as a result of knowing what is actually going on, can become a little bit jaded. When one "Alpha" decides to take a holiday, he sneaks off to a reservation of "savages" (folks who don't want any part of the Brave New World's society) and sees his illegitimate son. This is soon discovered, and he is brought forth before a committee which is shocked because they consider natural birth to be downright barbaric. The mother and son are brought into the "civilized" society, and everything quickly falls apart.

This book is fascinating in every way, from the colorful images that Huxley paints for the reader, to the parallels it draws to our current society. Brave New World is absolutely a must-read for anyone who is old enough to understand the implications, but try it for yourself! Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to the science fiction, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, a fun, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.