Leonard Gaya's Reviews > Brave New World

Brave New World is a young man's novel, written in the interwar years. Huxley was then living in a collapsing world: a world where the optimist 19th-century dreams of progress, of improved humanity, of a new and superior man, had been shattered in the trench warfare of World War I and were about to be burned amidst the horrors of the concentration camps.

Huxley seems to be sensing that grave danger is looming on the horizon, and he imagines a utopia where a single superstate is ruling the whole planet. The dream of a “superior humanity” has eventually come true, thanks to the extensive use of eugenics and mass cloning (babies in bottles). Not all people get the best genetic formula, however: some of these manufactured humans are reduced to imbecility, perform the lowest functions, and are nonetheless content with their lot. Children, of course, are all brainwashed and conditioned with hypnotic techniques (sleep teaching). There are no families anymore, and sexual promiscuity is pervasive. Adults get a further supply of silly entertainment (Feelies) and drugs (Soma) that renders them docile, keeps them young, and make them love their voluntary servitude. People have lost interest in art and science, and religion has been replaced by Henry Ford’s cult (i.e. assembly line applied to human beings) and occasional orgiastic ceremonies (orgy-porgies). In short, humanity has achieved happiness and reached the End of History.

To some extent, Huxley’s prophecies have become a reality, less than a century later: rational, hierarchical, hyper-efficient and optimised capitalism and cheery consumerism have conquered most of the world. The sexual revolution has indeed taken place — although full sexual libertarianism is still a pipe dream. Pharmacopoeia, narcotics, antidepressants, tranquillisers and rejuvenating treatments are broadly available; as well as irrelevant and mind-numbing 3D entertainment, peppered with commercial slogans. Genetic engineering and biotechnology are everywhere (although not used to select humans as yet).

Brave New World is a novel structured around a set of (rather crude) characters and plots; there is, however, no clear protagonist. Huxley has a witty tongue-in-cheek sense of humour throughout. Some passages even have a purely poetic or musical quality: particularly through the use of Shakespeare’s lines for the character of John Savage, or the cross-cutting technique employed in chapter 3. But by and large, the book feels like a philosophical essay or social satire, in the style of Voltaire’s Candide or Swift’s Gulliver's Travels. Obviously, Huxley had Plato’s Republic in mind, when designing his Alpha / Bêta / Gamma / Delta / Epsilon caste system (he was probably also referring to the school grades: A+ to F, already in use when he was a pupil at Eton College, or even to the caste system in India). Certainly, he remembered Nietzsche’s “Letzte Mensch” from Zarathustra’s prologue: a human type that has indeed invented happiness, comfort and social stability, but ultimately a petty and lethargic sort of humankind. A type of humanity that might well be appealing to us right now, who knows…

Brave New World is obviously a fascinating political statement that spoke to the European crisis of the 1930s. But its visionary impact and influence on speculative fiction cannot be overstated, from Orwell’s 1984 to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, to Atwood's Oryx and Crake, and to Houellebecq’s La Possibilité d'une île.

See also my review of Brave New World Revisited.

Edit: Watched Universal’s 2020 TV series adaptation. It is by and large faithful to the novel’s plot and characters, but ends up taking more and more liberties as the episodes go by. It’s also focusing way more on the entertainment potential of the book (especially the erotica aspects of the orgy-porgies) than on the political debate around the problem of happiness vs freedom. All references to Shakespeare have been removed as well, although the romance is a central part of the show (not so much in the book). Ultimately, Huxley’s philosophical novel serves as the rib cage of the series, but its heart is more like Black Mirror, Westworld, The Matrix or even Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Nonetheless, a pleasant “feely” with some nice eye candy!