Brave New World

I wouldn't exactly say that I enjoyed reading this, but I can definitely understand its merits. I was really surprised by how timeless it felt and how many relatively modern concepts made it into a book from 1932.

This was honestly a but of an uncomfortable read. I enjoyed it, but the entire concept of ‘mass production applied to biology’ throws me the fuck off from the start. Most warnings Huxley gives are still SO relevant today.

I read 1984 first, which was obviously written later, and although the themes are different, the message is the same: don’t take anything for truth because the once in charge tell you so- overall, the next time you think ‘the government wouldn’t do that’, oh yes they fucking would.

The names were clever, the book includes some fire quotes and in most aspects there was great world building. I thought it was interesting how Huxley explored the perspective of multiple of the characters. Alongside that, the ending was strangely disappointing. All in all a great read, would recommend if you’re starting to get into the historic dystopian/ science fiction scene.

Terrifyingly accurate. Was slightly disappointed by the ending.

Michael York is an exceptional narrator.

Really eye opening

Kind of glad I reread this, but definitely disappointed with it.

This and "1984" are the big dystopia books, I've heard it said that "Brave New World" is the more realistic one and I guess I'd agree. Admittedly, Mustapha Mond really does make it seem like a paradise, even if it just makes everybody dumb cattle. You're just popping pills and having sex all the time, interrupted only to play some sports or fly helicopters. The prayer meetings are weird, but worth it. Sign me up, dude.
Mustapha Mond is probably the most interesting character, actually, and he doesn't really get enough time in the story. In fact, I'd say just about everything about "Brave New World" feels like half a story in varying ways depending on the aspect. Mustapha, for instance: the guy's very interesting and we barely see him. Despite his lengthy dialogue with The Savage which acts as a both pretty well-written and ham-fisted exposition dump, I wish I saw more. The Savage? He has potential to be interesting, but he goes from philosopher to madman in like three pages. The world, the government, "Society"? There are some writings on it but nothing much happens there, instead we focus on characters like Bernard who are just horrible. Intentionally, fine, but the guy is intolerable. Helmholtz gets the spotlight on him for a brief instant as it passes from Bernard to The Savage, the guy is basically pointless to the story (which seems like a shame). Lenina only exists to make The Savage have a cringe-inducing meltdown, one that wrecks his character's point.

I don't know, outside of a few funny moments and I suppose a pleasant nightmare for how society could be shaped to be "idyllic", this was a slog for me. I don't see myself ever picking this up again. I didn't care for it in middle school but I was just a child, right? No, apparently I was painfully precocious. Not really, this book is just sort of undeserving of its praise.

I do not recommend "Brave New World".

Diction and themes feel like it could be written today.

I-am dat 4 stele, deși am ținut cont de faptul că e scrisă în anii 30, altfel i-as fi dat mai puțin. A fost usor de citit și m-a prins din primele pagini, dar nu m-am atașat de niciun personaj, “mesajul” nu m-a impresionat deloc, iar personajele și povestea în sine au fost lipsite de complexitatea la care mă așteptam. Lumea distopică descrisă a fost destul de interesantă. Nu o să o recitesc niciodată, dar poate o să o recomand cuiva cândva.

I've never been much for philosophy.

brave new world revisited included after the book reeled back in all my interest after reading it W copy tbh

Finished this book last month but haven’t gotten around the chance to write the review. For a book from the 1930s it explores topic that are still relevant to this day. Reading this reminds me of Divergent or Hunger Games where people are split into different categories depending on their strong suits. I’d like to say that this is the Ur-dystopian social science fiction novel. What’s more interesting for me is the use of genetic engineering to guarantee that everyone in the society has a function that benefits the other; they are then conditioned to never regret their positions in society. Except for Bernard Marx, who find life within the stability in the society boring. He refuse to take the recreational drug, soma, which can make all your troubles go away in a soma vacation. We then see how his story unfolds. The peak of the novel is where Marx brings two savages or people who are not conditioned to the society from the Savage Reservation. Overall i think it was a pretty interesting read, but not one that I particularly enjoy very much. I think the message the book is trying to say is too on-the-nose. But if you like dystopian novels maybe this is your cup of tea.

Would you rather have cheap but fast entertainment that gives you instant joy, or some hard process but gives your life meaning? In a world where there's no sadness and suffering, consumed by wonder drugs, instant gratification, physical engineering and sexual entertainments where there's no need to be physically and emotionally attached to someone else, could there be a meaning of life in a world like that? This book obviously goes deeper than that. However, for me, the main theme of the book is about having the meaning of life. In a life scored simply by effectivity and efficiency, how does someone gets a genuine and real meaning of their life? Of course, this book does not offer a solution, it offers a glimpse of an alternative, utopian world where everybody belongs to everyone else, where everybody could be happy instantly. It asks you a question, to make you think and reflects: It does sound like a weird, creepy world to live in. Where is God? Where is religion? If there aren't one, could we choose to be ignorant and do whatever we want? After all, people in this utopian world doesn't even bother to find out. They only care about stability, about their hunger for more happiness, about their needs, about their instant satisfaction. They don't care to give life meaning to themselves. What is freedom after all? Is freedom means to do whatever we want? Or it is to do something that we found really necessary to fulfil our needs, dreams, and hopes? Of course in this world, freedom means claiming the right to be unhappy, and what a serious statement is that. 'But I like the inconveniences.' 'We don't,' said the Controller. 'We prefer to do things comfortably.' What will you choose?

I liked this book! I am a big fan of science fiction and this one is a classic. It has an amazing world development however the story isn't really long nor special. In this world, the industrial revolution took a big step into human evolution, also technology is more important than emotions and reproduction. Humans are all made artificially and society gives them a classification accordingly to their job status. This book has a lot of interesting ethical questions and shows a world really similar to ours with some twists.

Get past the “gleep-glorp” sci-fi technobabble and there is some interesting bits and pieces. Interesting meditations on fake friends and what could be considered prescient stuff about reality tv celebrity (prodding mentally unwell people to be entertained by their reaction which only makes more people want to prod them which only further disregulates them), but as dystopian fiction it stinks. Authors getting twisted out of shape by imagining a world where people would rather watch tv or movies than read books always makes for lousy books. The greatest book of all time (Don Quixote) is about how books suck and people who take them seriously are deranged nut jobs, ruminate on that Aldous!

(Minor spoilers) This book is about two things: individuality and civilisation. The characters are all caricatures of what it means to possess social individuality. In broader terms, to be different to those around you. Bernard is different because he’s on the bottom rung of his caste, a rung that no one knew existed until he showed up. He is rejected because his individualised traits do not cohere with the rest of the caste that a part of. Helmholtz’s difference is his superiority, an ubermensch amongst the elite. He’s above everyone else. For Helmholtz, success is trivial, women are trivial, life is trivial; his place in society means little to him and so he has become aloof, rejecting comformity to his caste in favour of radical misbehaviour. John is different because he has no caste at all. He’s and outsider to almost everyone’s social circle, a true pariah. He’s too white and civilised to be an Indian yet too emotional and unstable to be considered civilian. That same civilisation then took his mother from him, poisoned his moral purity and, in the end, refused to let him escape its grasp. Lenina, in fact, has no individuality at all. She is the perfect Alpha - beautiful, brainless, adamant in her pursuit of orthodoxy. Her suffering arises when John forces individuality upon her through his exclusive infatuation of her – and then rejects her scripted advances, undermining the stability upon which her conditioning rests. It is through Lenina that we glimpse the dire consequence of removing individuality in favour of stability, pruning the autoimmunity that individuality gives. Mustapha Mond parenthetically tells us that difference is suffering. Ironically, Mond is perhaps the most individualistic person in the book, and paradoxically its happiest. Why? Because Mond isn’t actually different; because he is his own caste, his own comparison, his own society. He reads what he likes, dictates what he likes, declares his own morality – by his own admittance, he makes the rules. In a sense, he is beyond society. The illustration Aldous Huxley has painted for us is one of status anxiety, a critical feature of our modern world. It is what drives consumerism. It is what makes us jealous and angry at the success of others, and ashamed of our own failures. But what is failure without a comparison to success? Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety deals with this topic better than I ever could. In 1930, Aldous Huxley would have been aware of the rise of communism and the future it could promise. This book is in many ways a critique of that communism. The Brave New World is pointedly similar to how many people at the time described the ultimate outcome of successful communism – both the detractors and pundits; utopia and dystopia. Everything is easy, everyone is happy; to each what they need, with needs regulated closely. What Huxley truly felt about communism is best illustrated in the Cyprus experiment, perhaps. Is this book really dystopian, or is it utopian? What would Bentham have to say about the satisfied Alpha-Socrates, alongside the satisfied Gamma-Pigs? In 2019, a lot of the world that Huxley envisioned seems right around the corner. Designer babies, powerful escapist drugs made ubiquitous, paternalistic governments, insatiable consumerism…the list goes on. But the real lesson on offer in this book has been seemingly ignored: do we really want a world where individualism and its instability, its sturm-und-drang and emotional labour, has been replaced with happiness, easiness, and perhaps most jarringly of all, equality?

The book is a classic, and it is a great book. Helps you understand how world runs. The only thing that I didn't like about the book is that during a chapter (especially in the early chapters) context switches happen a lot which can be hard to follow if you're not super focused.

thought this would be another classic in the same vein as Fahrenheit that i would be relatively disappointed with. luckily that was not the case at all. this kicks soooo much ass, i’m glad i finally got to full this gap in my Essential Reading

absolutely loved reading.

meh. creative concept but took me a while

it’s so eerie how the book blatantly reflects the irony of today’s society.. with a little imaginary yet familiar (to modern reality) twist, of course

✦ deciding ur dystopia would be a sad-free zone ft. magic pills is one way to hellscape ✦ 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘢 sounds like the cure to all my problems

So messed up. So relatable.

imagine 1984 but with no stakes

An almost polar opposite to 1984 while remaining an (arguably) dystopian nightmare. The heavy influence of shakespear and Huxley's experience of drugs shows.

This almost feels like one of those books that I can’t put a star rating on—not because I can’t decide where it falls but because I don’t think it can be rated/given a “star rating” I have so many thoughts and opinions on this book and I found so much meaning from it, but surprisingly, I don’t have much I want to say in this review. I marked up/slightly annotated my copy, so that sort of serves as a review from me, I guess. I can 99% see myself rereading this many times over and fining something new every time. For anyone interested in reading this book, try not to let the hype get to you because to be honest, the book is best read with no preconceptions, just an open mind and an open schedule to devour this story. (view spoiler)[ Also, I kind of HATE and love the ending—reminds me of Steinbeck a lot and many good books seem to have endings like this (sort of open-ended or (for lack of better words) “don’t give you what you want/expected” endings) (hide spoiler)] Really glad I read this. P.S. My used copy I bought of this book was definitely used because there were a span of 30 pages or so in the middle of the book that had crappy underlining and highlighting that looked like some 6 year old had done it. This was much to my annoyance, but one a page in the middle of the book, there was a confusing but pretty cool ink doodle about something that was happening in the book. Seeing it actually made me like the crappy underlining, crappy highlighting, and even the scribbled spiral on the front cover because it made to book feel more like something that was passed on to me from someone else who was reading the same story I was reading, kind of like two people on opposite sides of the world admiring the same moon. Okay sorry, too deep. It’s a fun and interesting book, a classic that is timeless in that it is become increasingly relevant even as the story gets older and older...