Brave New Millenium

Cafe Society
1

Well this is my first post…so please be gentle! (hope this is in the right forum)

After reading and enjoying (if thats the right word) 1984 by Orwell someone recommended Brave New World, which is in its own way just as chilling and disturbing as the world of 1984 (if not as well written)

The thing is that after talking to a few people about it I was amazed to discover that half of them thought it to be a utopia!!!
Just goes to show Eye of the Beholder and all that…

So I have a couple of questions, first of which is does anyone have any other recommendations of good dystopic literature, outside the “Big Three” of 1984, BNW and probably Farnheit 451?

Secondly a moral question, I’d be interested in how many people here thought BNW was a negative or positive book.

For those who haven’t read it the plot is basically this:

In the year of our Ford six-hundred something, humans are no longer born, they are grown (hmmm, where have I heard that before). All people are divided into five social classes, from Alpha to Epsilon. The Alphas are the brains, and the Epsilons are the hard labor workers. The lower classes receive toxic substances when they are embryoes so that they are no more intelligent than a child. Once the embryoes have become children, they are seperated by class. Each group grows up together. These groups of children are exposed to speech in their sleep that isolates them from the other classes. For example, the speech tells the children that they should be glad to be an alpha, but those betas are ugly, the gammas are dumb, etc. This brainwashing makes them love what they will do in life. The Epsilons, who do the jobs that today no one else wants to do (garbage man, janitor, etc.), love their work, because of this brainwashing.

Basically, everyone in the world is happy, but really have no freedom. Now, I did a really bad job of outlining this story, so you’ll probably have to read the book, unless someone else can do a good job of outlining.

So my question to you is this: Is this world ethical? Is is right to take away everyone’s freedom, but give them happiness? Do the ends justify the means?

Tanks :smiley:

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Answers to your question: No, no, and no.

I’m amazed anyone thought that future would be a good thing. Aldous Huxley sure didn’t. The scary thing is cloning may be upon us sooner than anyone thinks. Eugenics can’t be far behind.

Another book might be “Atlas Shrugged” but that’s not set in the future.

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Try “WE” by some russian author whose name right now doesn’t come to mind…bit of a harder read than both 1984 and Brave New World

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No[sup]3[/sup]

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Thanks.

I was amazed that anybody could think that that was a depiction of a desireable future. Their basic argument was that “Well everyones happy aren’t they?”

Just another example of emotion overiding rationality I suppose.

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Read Anthem by Anne (sp?) Rand. It’s about this guy who breaks away from society, and goes into the “forbidden forest” then finds an old house that has books about the forbidden times, or something like that. I read it when I was a freshman in high school, now I’m a junior, so it’s been a while. I do remember it was fairly short and that “we” ment “I.”
Probaly in the same vein, but I’m not sure, Animal Farm by George Orwell deals with some of the animals being happy but not free. He parallels it with the Soviet Union.

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We is by Eugene Zamiatin. People who read it are always amazed by how much Orwell stole, er, adapted from it.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is another classic.

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“A Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood is one of the better dystopic novels I’ve read. It takes place after some group attacks Reagan and the US government. There’s a huge nuclear war, rendering a percentage of the society infertile, so that the fertile females must be “shared” in order to repopulate society. I thought it was well-written and interesting.