No spoilers, but I used to think, along the lines of Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, that Brave New World wound up being the more accurate picture of future society than 1984, despite being less well-known and referenced in cultural consciousness.
replyUnfortunately, it seems like the former may be enabling the latter, so we may end up with a “porque no los dos” situation.
No spoilers, but I've come to think that "Brave New World" actually is Utopian—in the "give people what they want" department.
replyI haven't read Brave New World but "We" by Evgeny Zamyatin left a similar impression on me, it's more subtle than 1984. It came out earlier than both books by the Western authors - even though Zamyatin was inspired while working in England in early 20th century.
replyThe book "The Machine Stops" was posted here a a while back it's a 100 years old and just as prescient as "Brave New World" and "1984". https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-m-forster/short-fiction/...
replyI will look up We.
There was a good theatre adaption of The Machine Stops by a UK group called Pilot Theatre (I saw it at York). They performed it as a live Youtube broadcast during the faf of 2020, though I can't see it listed anywhere now. Worth having a look for if you have better sources than mine. I must have a scan of my media array later, to see if I downloaded a copy I can rewatch.
replyThank you I will look for it.
replyFunnily enough, Orwell actually reviewed We in 1946: https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/zamyatin/english/e_zamy
replyThank you, that was new to me. I always felt a connection between those three books — We, Brave New World, 1984 — but this review really is the missing piece. He opens the review by describing the similarities between We and Brave New World, closes the review contrasting them politically. I can almost hear the wheels turning in his head, it feels like this review is an early treatment for 1984.
replymephi
reply1984 is a much better book. The writing is beautiful and the story is gripping. For that reason alone, it occupies a larger part of society’s psyche. I agree that many aspects of Brave New World were prescient, but 1984 isn’t entirely inaccurate either.
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reply1984 was as much (or more) about Stalinism and totalitarian tendencies in 1948 as it was a cautionary tale about the future.
reply> Brave New World wound up being the more accurate picture of future society than 1984.
replyThe current vector of the world has all the potential to end up in a blend of both.
Well, it's just like this except that... oh, you said no spoilers :)
replyActually.. not much. Education is taken care of.
Gestation is taken care of.
You grow up your young with a company instead of a family, if you want to be involved at all. All things that could go wrong, already sort of have over the last ten years and have been accordingly ironed out of humanity.
replySexuality as couples is already gone for large parts of the yoynger population. Culturally the family is as good as gone. Woman have kicked themselves enthusiastically out of all roles the species had to offer, except for that of work drone and that is going obsolete right now. They and their allies (almost all of those allies cheer on the ideas of incubators) wildly detest the idea of going back to traditional roles. Society has to come from somewhere and this is somewhere.. nothing of value was lost..
Without spoiling anything, I wouldn’t say anything “goes wrong” in Brave New World, at least as far as procreation is concerned.
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