Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Let me start by acknowledging a few things. First, I love me some dystopian fiction. So going in, I'm obviously biased in favor of this book. Second, I'm still a bit shocked I didn't read this book earlier in my life. It's the kind of book I've always enjoyed. Enough with the disclaimers, on to the book.

Brave New World was published in 1932 and is an obvious reaction to the rise of fascism and totalitarian communism in Europe and Russia. Huxley shows us a "civilization" that exists solely for its own stability. Essential human constructs and behaviors, such as family and love, are completely subjugated for the greater good of the civilization's stability. The civilization of BNW is a one-world government run by a council of controllers. This government was formed in the aftermath of the Nine Years War which devastated humanity with mass killing and unrestrained use of horrible weapons such as anthrax bombs (clearly an allusion to the destruction wreaked by WWI). As a reaction, people sought a way to eliminate future wars and were willing to make the compromises necessary to bring about permanent stability. While most of the world is civilized, there are still areas (quite like Indian reservations) that are home to the "Savages."

A key compromise to ensuring stability of the civilization is to eliminate history. Other than referencing the horrors of the Nine Years War, all other history is swept clean, along with the art and literature of those time periods. This ensures that the populace doesn't aspire to anything that their ancestors had and provides no models for alternative ways of living.

One of the most important parts of the book (and most disturbing to many) involves the creation and rearing of children. Since Henry Ford is the godhead of the civilization, everything is modeled around mass production. So it is with the embryos. Eggs are harvested from women and then artificially inseminated and essentially grown in a bottle. This isn't done willy-nilly, however, because that wouldn't be good for stability. The embryos are carefully created to conform to one of five castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Not only are the sperm and egg chosen for this purpose, but the nutrients (or lack thereof) and other chemicals that are put in the bottle with the embryo are all carefully calibrated to create an infant of the proper caste. After the infant is "decanted," it's then placed in a collective hatchery with others from its caste. The infants and children are then raised and conditioned to have the likes and dislikes of appropriate to their social group. No mothers, no fathers, no brothers or sisters...just your social group.

As with many pieces of dystopian literature, the characters are more cardboard cut-outs than in your "usual" fiction. The characters are there to explain the nature of the dystopia and its problems and to move the story along. In BNW, our main characters are Bernard Marx, Lenina Crowne, Helmholtz Watson, Mustapha Mond, and The Savage. Marx and Watson mark two of the discontents of the society, Lenina is a traditionalist of the civilization, Mond is a world controller, and The Savage shows us how a more "normal" human would behave in the milieu of BNW. Again, the arc of these characters isn't horribly important except as devices to illuminate various facets of the society.

For such a modestly-sized book there's a lot more that I could discuss. I could go on at length about the usee of casual sex and sedative hallucinogens to keep the masses from rising up, along with several other aspects of the book, but I figure I'll wrap up here. Brave New World is an excellent work that describes what could happen if follow blindly along one path. It also reminds us that we should question the choices that our leaders and our societies make. Further, we should question what sacrifices we're willing to make to keep our basic humanity. In many ways it's shocking that this book was written well before the outbreak of World War II, for so much was anticipated by Huxley (Hitler's eugenics program, easy transatlantic travel, several other things). Though it isn't quite up to par with the masterwork that is Orwell's 1984, Brave New World is an incredibly good book that is still quite relevant to today's reader.