Brave New World

Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Vintage Classics
1932 original publishing date
2006 Vintage reprint

[I know it's been a long while since I did a proper review, so please forgive the slightly rambly nature of this piece...]

A little while back I reviewed 1984, the classic dystopian, science-fiction novel by George Orwell (maybe not that science-fictional since it could be argued that it was used as a sort of Totalitarian-State Users Manual in North Korea, but I digress...) The other book often mentioned in 1984's company is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. (Orwell actually sent a draft copy of 1984 to Huxley, who had been his French teacher at Eton. And Orwell also reviewed Brave New World, in 1940, saying that, "though brilliant ... it probably casts no light on the future." Lol.)

When it was published, it was heavily criticised. Huxley, on a trip to America, had been rather shocked by the sexual promiscuity and what he saw as the bawdy, hedonistic cheapness of the place - this was at a time when Europe was extremely fearful of Americanisation, after the First World War, and the old world was crumbling - and Brave New World partly arose from his experiences there, in particular his reading of a book by Henry Ford (called Our Ford in the novel, and seen as a Messiah figure; the dates are A.F 150, etc...) and from other issues at the forefront of contemporary minds -- there are characters with surnames, Marx, Freud, Engels, Mond, and so on.

Brave New World is the totalitarian system through ignorance - people are actually bred to varying degrees of intelligence - whereas in 1984 Orwell proposed that the language itself might be altered to change how people think, i.e. linguistic relativism or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (hey, I'm a linguist, let me name-drop; the theory does not really hold much water with modern research). Brave New World is the drug and hedonism and the evils of science, and 1984 is jackboots, bombs and tanks.

Like with 1984, I was surprised at how easy this one was to read. While some of the language has dated, and some of the predictions are a little bit giggle-worthy (all the Our Ford stuff), Huxley would probably feel vindicated by his account if he were alive today, in today's modern, liberal, sexually-aware, drug-and-alcohol-tolerant society. (And long may it live.)

I find Huxley's vision far scarier than Orwell's because it is hard to argue against - there are no wars, sex is not something to be ashamed of, everybody is conditioned to enjoy their work and be proud of what they do, death is not feared, people do not age (visibly, that is; perfectly healthy, 20-year-old-looking sexagenarians drop dead of internal ageing), and everybody is happy. Except some of our protagonists...

The story of Brave New World is really quite simple. It's told through multiple third-person points of view - Bernard Marx, a socially-useless man, quite high up in his job, who harbours secret (and not so secret) reservations about their society, and who gets in trouble as a result; Lenina, one of the Beta-plus caste created with a quite high amount of intelligence, who becomes fascinated by Bernard, even while she fears his "madness", and the fact that he is, shockhorror, monogamous; and Bernard's friend Hemholtz Watson, who is ostracised by people because, unlike Bernard, he is too clever and too handsome. In a bid to impress Lenina, Bernard takes her on holiday to see one of the very last Savage Colonies, where mankind lives in a sort-of primitive pre-Industry society - there they come across the Savage, who has strange ideas of love and has read some guy they've never heard of - Shakespeare - and is going to rock the boat quite a lot when he's brought back to London...

Brave New World is not really what you'd call a fast-paced novel, there's not much action, but it does read very easily, and is a masterful snapshot of a terrifying future. Enjoyable - and terrifying - to read.

For more information:

Amazon UK
Amazon US

-Previous review-

Torchwood - Children of Earth: Day One

BBC One, 9pm. This is the first episode in the five-part series, with each one-hour long episode being shown consecutively over the course of this week. Unless you live in America, in which case you have to wait until the 20th. Muahaha.

If you remember, at the end of the last series, half the Torchwood team had been killed off. Tosh, a favourite character, and Owen, not so much, were done away with - although Owen got to hang around a bit longer as one of the living dead thanks to a Glove of Evil he wore. Or something... The Torchwood writers had shown they could up the ante a bit, and take risks, so I was eager to see what they'd come up with this time...

Wow. Before I go all gushing with praise, I should say that not much happened that couldn't have been anticipated with the trailer: children all over the world stop moving, and start speaking a message from aliens. It sounds a bit similar to one of the Doctor Who Christmas specials. It was the way it was done, though, that makes up for that - and some things that totally were not expected. There will be a few spoilers, and some stuff that will make no sense to the non-Torchwood-aficionado...

Good things:

1) Torchwood is severely compromised, with the team (and one member of it in particular...) scattered to the wind. They seem to be in the losing position here, with the official forces trying to do them in. There's an element of danger - and the possibility, given the writers' earlier slaughtering of half the team in the previous series, that Torchwood and Captain Jack especially are really screwed.

2) Martha is away. On honeymoon, she is uncontactable by Jack apparently (even though as a UNIT member, she should be up to stuff now, seeing as the world is ending...) Oh no. What a loss. Oh well, life goes on.

3) Some bits really creeped me out. Well, one bit, really, and it probably shouldn't have, the type of stuff I normally watch and read. But the children. Screaming. In symphony. Eek. Goosebumps.

4) Shady government conspiracy stuff, which, assuming no get-out-of-jail card is pulled, will have a permanent affect on the storyline of the future - and probably that of Doctor Who, too. After all, if Torchwood is being bombed and orders given to kill the team by government officials, their relationship isn't going to be that peachy when things are all sorted. If they're sorted.

5) An international event. Yay. Too often everything happens solely in Cardiff, even the fighting of an enormous demon in the first series that wants to consume the Earth. I love Cardiff, but the story gets a bit of needed epicness in this first episode. Plus, the British Government seems uniquely to understand what the hell is going on here - and uniquely compromised, with the suggestion that the rest of the world ain't going to be too happy if they find out what we did, when the aliens were last here...

6) We get to see more of Jack and Ianto's family (yes, family). Which is surprising in Jack's case, and much-needed in Ianto's, because he desperately needs a character.

7) This episode was good. Good enough to make friends who'd never watched Torchwood before text me five minutes after the end of the episode saying OMG!!! etc. Hopefully, this means that the BBC, who cut the number of episodes in the series down, will actually go ahead and commission a fourth bloody series! :)


Bad things:

1) Not much really happened in this episode. Sure, a lot of things were set up, and it was quite gripping, but there needs to be a lot of action in tonight's episode (which there will be, I have a feeling.)

2) Don't be dead, Jack. That would be horrible.

3) Don't be alive, Jack. That would stretch credulity, and utterly ruin any realism in the series, and remove any sense of danger or that this story was something bold and different.

4) The new-assistant-in-government-department-character is introduced, a thing Russell T. Davies seems particularly keen on - and she's already stumbling on enormous secrets because a high-level spook gave her the password to the high-security files (the spook couldn't be bothered to log-in herself)... and will doubtless prove very helpful to the Torchwood team before either being killed or joining them, and then being killed.

5) There's no real menace yet. Children are saying creepy things. OK. But are they/we in any kind of real danger? None has been hinted at yet.

I'll be tuning in again tonight, that's for sure! Feel free to chat about last night's episode and your theories in the comments below :)