Brave New World: Encyclopedia - Brave New World

Brave New World

Brave New World is a 1932 dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley, set in London in the 26th century. The novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, eugenics and hypnopedia that combine to change society. The world it describes could in fact also be a utopia, albeit an ironic one: Humanity is carefree, healthy, and technologically advanced. Warfare and poverty have been eliminated, all races are equal, and everyone is permanently happy. The irony is, however, that all of these things have been achieved by eliminating many things — family, cultural diversity, art, literature, religion and philosophy.

Brave New World is Huxley's most famous and enduring novel. The title comes from Miranda's speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:

Brave New World - Synopsis

The novel begins in London, in the "year of Our Ford 632" (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The entire planet is united as The World State, under a peaceful world government which has eliminated war, poverty, crime, and unhappiness by creating a homogenous high-tech society across Earth, based on the industrial principles of Henry Ford. Fordism forms the bedrock of the new society, gaining a semi-religious status and forming the backbone of philosophy. Society is rigidly divided into five classes, and all members of society are trained to be good consumers to keep the economy strong. All citizens are expected to be involved socially; spending time alone is discouraged, and sexual promiscuity is the social norm. Recreational drug use has become a pillar of society, and all citizens regularly swallow tablets of soma, a narcotic-tranquilizer that makes users mindlessly happy. A significant aspect of the society (and perhaps the most disturbing to readers) is the mechanisation of reproduction. Citizens of the World State do not reproduce naturally; people are taught to view natural reproduction as a barbarous and primitive act. Instead, all children are created from embryos grown in factories: production of embryos is, perversely, planned according to the economic capacity of society. For the embryo, the womb is replaced by an artificial life-support mechanism referred to as a bottle. Significantly, each individual's destiny is determined long before he or she is "decanted".

Huxley reveals the world through the eyes of the main protagonists, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx. Lenina, a laboratory worker in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, is a conformist, a personification of the new society. She is attractive, fashionable, promiscuous, and her outlook on life comes entirely from government indoctrination. Bernard serves as an antithesis to her. Despite being a member of the upper caste of Alphas, Bernard is unhappy with his life and dislikes society. He feels deeply insecure with himself and, unknown to him, is something of a joke to other people for his rejection of societal norms.

The first half of the novel describes life in the World State, and the personalities of Lenina and Bernard. Midway through the novel, Bernard takes Lenina to Malpais, a Savage Reservation in New Mexico, where they see an ancient society that has been fenced off and ignored by the World State. In the reservation, the two encounter Linda, a woman from the World State who, through an accident, came to live as a savage in Malpais, having given birth to a son named John. While Lenina is disgusted and horrified by the dirty, neglected and viviparous society of Malpais, Bernard is fascinated by it and by John, who has access to the works of William Shakespeare, unknown in the World State. Like Bernard, John is an outcast in his own society and is eager to see the world outside of Malpais. Bernard agrees to take Linda and John back to London, where he manipulates society's fascination with them to boost his own social position. John is appalled by the World State, and when Linda dies, he is unable to understand society's reaction to death and withdraws into isolation. However, he is unable to live in peace and, constantly harassed by inquisitive sightseers, resorts to self-torture. Bernard, in a twist of fate, is sent to live in the Falkland Islands, one of several island colonies reserved for citizens of the World State who no longer wish to live in global society, where he is destined to live out his life in peace and solitude. At the very end of the novel, John attacks Lenina and succumbs to an orgy of drugs and sex. In the morning, horrified by what he has done and disgusted with World State society, he commits suicide.

Brave New World - Fordism and society

The World State is built around the principles of Henry Ford, who has become a Messianic figure worshipped by society. The word lord has been replaced with ford. The assembly line process is present in many aspects of life, and the symbol "T" has replaced the Christian cross, a reflection of the Model T car developed by Henry Ford. His famous phrase "History is bunk" has become the fundamental approach to studying the past – as a result, no-one knows of past societies. Citizens have no awareness of history except for a vague idea of how terrible things were before the inception of the present society. They know that humans used to be viviparous and what parents and birth were, but these concepts are taboo, and "mother" and "father" are this society's equivalent of dirty words. There are no families, and no-one is born in a natural way. Instead, humans are grown in factories according to industrial quotas. In this society, people are "decanted" into a chemically enforced and totally conformist caste society. Children are engineered in fertility clinics and artificially gestated. The three lower castes are manufactured in groups of up to 96 clones from a single embryo (called Bokanovsky groups), and they are chemically stunted and/or deprived of oxygen during their maturation process to control their intelligence level and physical development.

The Alpha caste consists of those destined for leadership positions, with Betas filling professional and administrative posts requiring higher education, but without the leadership responsibilities of the Alphas. These two groups together form the upper castes, with Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons comprising the lower castes, each with a descending degree of intelligence, Epsilons being so stupid as to be described as "semi-morons", and trained to perform the most menial tasks without complaint. People are thus manufactured to fill their jobs, rather than jobs being created for people. Within these classes are subgroups, plus or minus, which further determines their roles in society (every possible combination appears at least once in the text, with the exception of Delta-Plus). In addition, a subgroup dubbed "Alpha Double-Plus" appears twice (once in a class about relativity, the other in a discussion betwen Mustapha Mond and John the Savage). Members of each caste also wear uniforms, the colour of which identified which caste they belonged to. Alphas wear grey, Betas mulberry (purple), Gammas green, Deltas khaki, and Epsilons black.

From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated, by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep, to believe that their own is the best class to be in. Any residual unhappiness is resolved by an antidepressant and somewhat hallucinogenic drug called soma.

Contrary to what modern readers would expect, the biological techniques used to control the populace in Brave New World do not include genetic engineering. Huxley wrote the book in 1932, twenty years before Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. As the science writer Matt Ridley put it, Brave New World describes an "environmental, not a genetic, hell."

Brave New World - Lenina and Bernard

In the first half of the novel, the two characters of Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx (their names allude to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and founder of communism Karl Marx) present contrasting viewpoints of this society. Lenina is the perfect (female) citizen, happy and "pneumatic", conformist in her behaviour, fulfilling her function in society, which seems to be to sleep with as many men as possible, but largely incapable of free thought – she does not even recognise her love for the "Savage", as love conflicts with her conditioning. In contrast, Bernard is something of an outsider; intellectually gifted but physically smaller than is typical for an Alpha, he faces (or at least believes he faces) social problems including rejection by women of his caste and lack of respect from lower castes. As a result, he has become a loner and a social misfit, embarrassed when trying to set up dates with women, uninterested in sports, preferring to be miserable rather than take soma, and often expressing nonconformist opinions. Bernard's unacceptable behaviour lands him in trouble with his boss, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning. But nevertheless, Bernard secures his permission to visit the savage reservation in New Mexico to where he takes Lenina on a date.

Brave New World - The Reservation and the Savage

The second half of the novel begins with the visit to the reservation. It is here that the other main protagonist of the novel is introduced. John is the son of two citizens of the Brave New World (he is the result of an accidental contraception failure). His parents – we soon learn that his father is none other than Bernard's boss – were visiting the savage reservation when his mother got lost; she was stranded inside the reservation and gave birth to him there. He grew up with the lifestyle of the Zuni Native American tribe and a religion that is a blend of Zuni and Christian beliefs. However, he is also influenced by his mother's education (she taught him to read) and by his discovery of the works of William Shakespeare. The culture shock which results when the "savage" is brought into the society of the "Brave New World", as he initially calls it, provides a vehicle for Huxley to contrast the values of the society with our own and point out the Brave New World society's major flaws.

The key moral point of the book revolves around two diametrically opposing problems. The first, and most obvious, is that in order to ensure continuous and universal happiness, society has to be manipulated, freedom of choice and expression curtailed, and intellectual pursuits and emotional expression inhibited. Citizens are happy, but John the Savage considers this happiness to be artificial and "soulless". In a pivotal scene he argues with another character, World Controller for Western Europe Mustapha Mond, that pain and anguish are as necessary a part of life as is joy, and that without the former to provide context and perspective, "joy" becomes meaningless. The second problem presented in the novel is that freedom of choice and expression, the recognition of (or rather the inhibition of) emotional expression and the pursuit of intellectual ideas, result in an absence of happiness. This problem is shown primarily through the character of Bernard, but also by the behaviour of John in the final stages of the novel. Unable to fully suppress his desire for Lenina, which he believes is morally unacceptable, but also feeling remorse at the death of his mother which he is not allowed to express, he seeks isolation from society.

Brave New World - Resolution

In the last chapter, Bernard Marx and his friend Helmholtz Watson go into exile in the islands, but the Savage is not allowed to go with them. Instead, he finds an old lighthouse in rural England as a home and he tries to start a new life as a hermit, including a regime of privation and self-flagellation. Unfortunately, as he is by now a novel celebrity, he is constantly harassed by paparazzi. Finally, after a video of him whipping himself brings throngs of visitors, including Lenina, he succumbs to an orgy of sex and soma. The following morning, stricken by grief, remorse, and despair, he hangs himself.

In other themes, the book attacks assembly line production as demeaning, the liberalisation of sexual morals as being an affront to love and family, the use of slogans or thought-terminating clichés, the concept of a centralised government, and the use of science to control people's thoughts and actions. While Huxley attacks the emergence of socialist and communist attitudes, he also opposes capitalist consumer society. Indeed, the latter motifs are stronger than the former: in the novel, the legendary founder of the society was Henry Ford, whose writings occupy Mustapha Mond's bookshelves. The letter T (a reference to the Ford Model T) has replaced the cross as a quasi-religious symbol.

The title of the book is a quotation from Miranda in Act V of Shakespeare's The Tempest, when she meets people other than her father for the first time. John Savage is a keen Shakespeare fan, which sets him further apart from the vast majority of humanity in Huxley's dystopia. Like most of the world's past artistic and cultural achievements, Shakespeare's works are banned and unknown in this society to everyone but the World Controllers.

In 1993, an attempt was made to remove this novel from a California school's required reading list because it "centred around negative activity".

Brave New World - Characters

Brave New World - Of the Fordian society

• Arch-Community Songster, a semi-religious figure based in Canterbury
• Assistant Director of Predestination
• Darwin Bonaparte, a paparazzo
• Fanny Crowne, friend of Lenina
• Lenina Crowne, Beta-Plus Embryo Worker
• Thomas, the Director of the Central London Hatchery
• Henry Foster, administrator at the Hatchery and Lenina's current partner
• Benito Hoover, an Alpha-Plus friend of Lenina, disliked by Bernard
• Miss Keate, Headmistress of the high-tech glass and concrete Eton College
• Bernard Marx, Alpha-Plus psychologist
• Mustapha Mond, World Controller for Western Europe
• Helmholtz Watson, Alpha-Plus friend and confidant of Bernard Marx

• At the Solidarity Service: Morgana Rothschild (woman whose unibrow haunts Marx), Herbert Bakunin, Fifi Bradlaugh, Jim Bokanovsky, Clara Deterding (the President of the group), Joanna Diesel, Sarojini Engels, Tom Kawaguchi

Brave New World - Of the Malpais Savage Reservation

• John the Savage, son of Linda and Thomas, an outcast in his society
• Linda, John's mother, formerly a Beta-Minus Embryo Worker in London
• Warden of the Reservation, an Alpha administrator
• Kiakimé, loved by John
• Kothlu, who married Kiakimé
• Old Mitsima, who teaches John about Indian lore
• Palowhitwa
• Popé, Linda's lover, whom John detests

Brave New World - Historical characters

These are fictional and factual characters who died before the events in this book, but are of note in the novel.

• Henry Ford
• William Shakespeare
• Reuben Rabinovitch, (the fictional boy who first discovers sleep-learning, hypnopædia)
• Henry Jones Ford
• Sigmund Freud, whose last name the utopian denizens of the novel mistake as a misspelling of "Ford".

Brave New World - The World State

Brave New World - History

The citizens of The World State use a calendar which takes the year 1908 as its starting point, as this was the first year in which the Model T automobile was produced by the Ford Company. According to the novel, the "Nine Years' War" broke out in Year 141, or the year 2049 of our calendar. Very little is revealed of The Nine Years' War, but it can be inferred that the conflict broke out in Europe, affected most of the planet, and caused massive physical damage. It is repeatedly stated that chemical weapons were heavily used during the war, particularly in mass air-raids against cities. Following the war, which seems to have petered out rather than been ended by a decisive victory, the global economy collapsed and created an unprecedented worldwide economic crisis. To deal with the two catastrophes of the Nine Years' War and the Great Economic Collapse, the new world leaders tried to forcibly impose their new ideologies on Earth's populations. This met with widespread resistance, including large-scale riots at Golders Green and a massacre at the British Museum. Realising that they could not force people to adopt the new lifestyle, the World Controllers instead united the planet into the One World State and began a peaceful campaign of change. This campaign included the closing of museums, the suppression of almost all literature published before 2058, and the destruction of the few historical world monuments that had survived the Nine Years' War. By the time the novel is set, The World State is fully established and almost all citizens of Earth are under its full control.

Brave New World - Political geography

By the time the novel is set, the entire planet is united as The One World State, governed by ten World Controllers, headquartered in various key cities. A few isolated areas have been left as "savage reservations", including parts of New Mexico, Samoa, and a small group of islands off the coast of New Guinea. Toward the end of the novel, a conversation between John and Western Europe's World Controller, Mustapha Mond, reveals further details of the World State's political geography. Mond explains that areas which have very few resources or languish in unpleasant climates are not "civilised" by the government, as it would be uneconomical. Subsequently, these areas are left as reservations, and local life continues. Islands across the planet, such as Iceland, the Falkland Islands, and the Marquesas Islands, are reserved for citizens of the World State who do not wish to live in, or do not fit into the normal society.

Brave New World - Population

The two billion inhabitants of the World State are rigidly divided into five classes or castes. Society is controlled by Alphas and their subordinates, Betas. Below them, in descending order of intelligence and physique, are Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Each caste is further subdivided into Plus and Minus. At the very pinnacle of society sit Alpha Double-Plus, who are destined to be the future scientists and top administrators of the world. People in different castes are conditioned to be happy in their own way – they do not feel resentment towards other castes, but rather feel a slight contempt for people not members of their own caste. At the same time, however, all members of society are repeatedly taught that everyone is equally important to society.

Citizens of the World State enjoy racial harmony across the planet. Although England is mostly populated with Caucasians, the population also contains substantial ethnic proportions. When visiting an electrical products factory in London, John witnesses Caucasians and black Senegalese working together. The only "feely" (see below) in the novel features a black hero with a white heroine. In the first pages of the novel, the Director of Hatcheries describes how babies are grown regardless of ethnic group, and that Caucasians, Negroes, and Hispanics are all produced in the Central London Hatchery alone.

Brave New World - Technology

Life in the World State in A.F. 632 is dominated by very advanced technology, which influences all aspects of life. Sport – a pillar of the World State – consists of various games played using a bewildering array of high-tech gadgets, in order to keep factories busy. Games such as "Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy", "Riemann Surface Tennis", and "Electro-Magnetic Golf" are major distractions for all levels of society. Another key aspect of entertainment are the "feelies" – the World State's high-tech version of "movies". In the later part of the novel, Lenina takes John to a feely, where the concept is explained. Users rest their hands on metal knobs protruding from the arms of their chair, allowing them to feel the physical sensations of the actors on-screen (these seem to be used almost exclusively for sexual films). Various other high-tech entertainment devices feature heavily in the book, including Synthetic Music Boxes, Scent Organs (musical instruments which combine music with pleasant aromas), Colour Organs (combining music with a dazzling light show), and televisions.

Transport technology is also highly advanced. The main form of urban transport is the helicopter, with variations including "taxicopters" and expensive, long-range "sporticopters". For the lower castes, high-speed monorails are used to travel around the countryside. Global travel is conducted using rocket planes, which are colour-coded according to their destinations.

In the Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, advanced technology is used in the creation of new embryos. In addition to high-tech laboratory equipment, the Hatcheries rely on machines to condition bottled embryos to heat, sudden motion, and disease, allowing the embryos to fulfill their predestined jobs in specific climates. Newly hatched children in the Conditioning Centres are exposed to a variety of technologically advanced devices which help to mould them into their predetermined roles. In a disturbing scene in the opening chapters, Delta children are trained to hate the countryside and books in a process involving klaxons and electrocution. Hypnopaedia is conducted using speakers built into the beds. The speakers themselves are fed by machines which convert printed material into softly spoken words.

Other aspects of life are greatly influenced by advanced technology. Most clothes are made from fine synthetic materials such as acetate and viscose. Architecture is dominated by "vitra-glass" and "ferroconcrete" skyscrapers. Men shave using electrolytic razors and consume sex-hormone chewing gum. Citizens can relax using "vibro-vac" massage machines and the ever-present soma (the novel reveals that although this is ingested in tablet form, it can also be vaporised to form an anaesthetic cloud).

The novel repeatedly explains that the reason for such advanced technology is to keep workers busy manufacturing products. Interestingly though, the citizens of the World State could enjoy significantly better devices. In a conversation towards the end of the novel, World Controller Mustapha Mond explains to John that countless plans and designs for more advanced technologies already exist. The World State could, he explains, synthetically manufacture all of its food products and use highly efficient labour-saving machines. However, more advanced technology is not developed, as the World Controllers fear that high-tech machines would result in people having too much time on their hands. This, explains Mond, is not in the World State's best interests, following a previous experiment in Ireland, which revealed that more advanced technology simply led to widespread boredom and increased use of soma. Although the citizens of Brave New World enjoy very advanced gadgets, they are unaware that human technology has in fact reached an artificial peak.

Brave New World - Possible symbolism

It has been discussed by several literary critics, and backed up by Aldous Huxley, that the book, while satirizing the development of society, also provides a suicidal outlook on the future. In the novel, the reservation (which is associated with the past, and all the squalor and disease in it) and the futuristic society (which, aptly enough, represents the future) come together in the protagonist, John. In a metaphorical sense, this coming together could represent the present, as John is neither fully part of the past or future societies. At the end of the novel, John commits suicide out of remorse, but it can also be inferred that he commits suicide because there is nowhere left for him to go. All he has is the disease-ridden past or the conformist future.

Brave New World - Satire of 1930s society

As a method of underscoring similarities to his fictional dystopia and his own contemporary culture, Huxley incorporates several sly, satirical references to targets such as the Church of England (which he refers to as a "community sing"), the BBC or British tabloid The Daily Mirror ("The Delta Mirror"), "Christian Science Monitor" ("The Fordian Science Monitor"), Henry Ford, George Bernard Shaw and Sigmund Freud. Brave New World's London propaganda centre is at Fleet Street, the traditional home of the British press, and the pseudo-religious Arch-Community Songster is based at Canterbury, where the clergical head of the modern day Church of England sits.

Huxley's characters are given names chosen from significant individuals in the World State's past. For example, Bernard Marx refers to Bernard Shaw (one of the few ancient writers left uncensored) and Karl Marx. Because the World State embodies traits typically attributed to opposite ends of the political spectrum, some of the names Huxley coined refer to diametrically opposed individuals or ideologies. For instance, we find a young girl named Polly Trotsky and a woman named Morgana Rothschild, echoing both Communist leaders and a dynasty of bankers. Among these references are the following:

• Lenina Crowne: Crown is a turn of phrase referring to the monarch and monarchial government; her first name recalls Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution of 1917, a radical overthrow of a monarchy. Fanny Crowne is a split that needs no explanation.

• Mustapha Mond: The head of the local society is named after a particularly modernistic pair, Mustapha Kemal Atatürk and Sir Alfred Mond. The former was a leader who modernised Turkey from Islamic ties while the latter was head of Imperial Chemical Industries, a leader in modern labour relations in Britain – and also happened to be Jewish.

Two characters are named after blends of fascists and industrialists:

• Primo Mellon combines Miguel Primo de Rivera, the dictator of Spain precursory to Francisco Franco, and Andrew W. Mellon, an industrialist turned philanthropist.
• Benito Hoover joins fascist Benito Mussolini and Herbert Hoover, early 20th-century President of the USA.

Futhermore, there are references to the emerging communist state of the Soviet Union in the 1930s:

• Bernard Marx is an obvious reference to Karl Marx.
• Sarojini Engels is another reference in the book to Friedrich Engels, a co-theorist of Marxism and the developer of Marxist economic policy.

Other minor characters who take their names from scientists, political leaders, and industrial leaders:

• Sarojini Engels' first name is a reference to Sarojini Naidu, an Indian political leader and contemporay of Gandhi.
• Fifi Bradlaugh is a reference to Charles Bradlaugh, a British political activist and atheist
• Herbert Bakunin is a reference to Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, a Russian anarchist
• Clara Deterding is a reference to Henri Deterding, a former chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell oil company
• Joanna Diesel is a reference to Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the Diesel engine
• Darwin Bonaparte combines scientist Charles Darwin with dictator Napoleon Bonaparte
• George Edzel is a reference to Edsel Ford, only son of Henry Ford and president of the Ford Motor Company from 1919-1943
• Polly Trotsky is a reference to Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary and Marxist theorist. The apparent successor to Lenin, he was instead exiled to Mexico after Stalin came to power.

Additionally, the word "Ford" is used as a replacement for the word Lord or God; the starting date for their calendar is the date on which Henry Ford introduced the Model T, their dates are prefaced by A.F., for After Ford, and in dialogue, the word Ford is used in expressions such as "Oh my Ford!", in a clear substitution for Lord. These details allude to the religious level in which mass industry is treated in Brave New World.

Brave New World - Comparison with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

Brave New World and George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four are both often used in political discussions of government actions perceived to be authoritarian. However, a key difference between 1984 and Brave New World is that while in 1984 people are kept from knowledge perceived to be "dangerous" by means of continual mass surveillance and coercion, in Brave New World the characters are physically engineered not to desire "dangerous" knowledge in the first place. One could say that while in 1984 the people are dehumanised by the state controlling their natural instincts such as sex or free thought, in Brave New World the "state" infantilises the masses by giving free rein to basic human instincts such as sex and ceding responsibility to herd mentality.

Both novels incorporate a class of people (in 1984, the "proles" and in Brave New World, the "savages" in the "Savage Reservations") who exist on the periphery of the dystopian society in a state of relative physical squalor, but with little to no societal interference, outside of an enforced state of non-education. While both classes as such are peripheral to their respective milieus, they serve as an important device for delineating contrast between the dystopian society in question and what the author arguably perceives as being a more ideal society.

The two novels also contrast in many ways. The nightmare world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is dominated by suffering. Slavery, torture, and war are the societal norms of the world, and the overriding theme is one of intense hatred. That of Brave New World, in contrast, is one of euphoric love. War, crime, and even pain have been eliminated, allowing all citizens of the World State to live long, permanently happy lives in peace and plenty. The ghoulish fascination London's citizens have in John's self-abuse highlights the extent to which society has been conditioned to abhor negative feelings.

In addition, the society presented in Brave New World is, to some extent, tolerant of outsiders, in so much as it respects the idea of there being an "outside". While the dystopian world of 1984 is all-encompassing, the world Brave New World includes "savage reservations" and "the islands". The latter are effectively places of exile for freethinkers, but they are also to some extent a "safe haven". No such places exist in 1984.

Social Critic Neil Postman contrasts the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World in the foreward of his 1986 book Amusing Ourselves to Death thusly:

Brave New World - Quotes

• "Bokanovsky's process is one of the major instruments of social stability!" A reference to the importance that the World State attaches to human cloning.

• "Every one belongs to every one else." A government slogan encouraging sociability and sexual promiscuity.

• "One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years, thought Bernard Marx, who was a specialist on hypnopædia. Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!" Bernard Marx's comments on the preceding slogan and an analysis on the effects of state-sponsored sleep teaching.

• "Community, Identity, Stability." The motto of the World State.

• "No social stability without individual stability." Refers to mass use of soma to create "stable" citizens who conform to societal norms.

• "Christianity without tears — that’s what soma is." Mustapha Mond's summarisation of the hypnotic, revered drug soma.

• "But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." John's interpretation of social norms being restrictive, denying him the opportunity to experience the human conditon.

• "A gramme is better than a damn." A slogan encouraging people not to dwell on gloomy thoughts, but to obliterate them with drugs.

• "Ending is better than mending." A government slogan encouraging people to throw away old possessions and buy new ones, keeping the global economy strong.

• "But in the Kurfustendamm and the Eighth Arrondisement, the explosion of the anthrax bombs is hardly louder than the popping of a paper bag" Mustapha Mond's description of the horrors of the Nine Years' War

Brave New World - Brave New World Revisited

Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Row, 1958, 1965), written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New World, was a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had moved towards or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. He believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a reasonable guess as to where the world might go in the future, but in Brave New World Revisited he concluded that the world was becoming much more like Brave New World much faster than he had ever thought possible.

Huxley analysed the causes of this, such as overpopulation, as well as all the means by which populations can be controlled. He was particularly interested in the effects of drugs and subliminal suggestion. Brave New World Revisited is different in tone and impact to the original novel, due to Huxley's evolving thought and his conversion to Vedanta between the two books.

Brave New World - Related media works

• The Scientific Outlook by philosopher Bertrand Russell. When Brave New World was released, Russell thought that Huxley's book was based on his own book The Scientific Outlook that had been released in previous year. Russell contacted his own publisher and asked whether he should do something or not. Russell's publisher advised him to do nothing and he followed this advice.
• Men Like Gods (1921) by H.G. Wells. Dystopian novel that also was the source of inspiration for Brave New World.
• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman, alludes many times to how television is goading modern Western culture to be like what we see in Brave New World, where people are not so much denied human rights such as free speech and expression, but conditioned to just not care.
• The 1993 movie Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock and Nigel Hawthorne, repeatedly makes allusions to Brave New World. Both involve a mechanised future where everybody is kept happy, where undesirable things (those that reduce society's happiness) are banned. A couple of references to the book include the fact that Sandra Bullock's character is named Lenina Huxley, a mix of Lenina Crowne and Aldous Huxley, and a scene where Lenina Huxley tells John Spartan (Stallone's character), "John, you're a savage!" calling John the Savage to mind. At one point in the movie Snipes' character says, "It's a brave new world," to Spartan. The movie is otherwise not related to the book.
• The 1998 made-for-TV movie Brave New World, starring Peter Gallagher and Leonard Nimoy, is an abridged version of the original story. The numerous alterations to the novel include the absence of the Epsilon caste as well as the Plus/Minus inter-caste distinctions, the characterisation of Linda as a"savage" who was seduced by the Alpha DHC, the addition of a Delta who was conditioned by the DHC to kill Bernard Marx, John the Savage falling off a cliff while being pursued by the paparazzi and Mond giving Marx the job of DHC (after the previous one was fired), which he leaves when Lenina becomes pregnant with his child. The film ends with Marx and Lenina raising their child in a Savage Reservation.
• The Swedish band Tiamat made a song named "Love Is As Good As Soma", a direct reference to the book.
• The band The Smashing Pumpkins created a song entitled "Soma" which is evidently inspired by the novel.
• The 2000 album and song Brave New World by Iron Maiden. Both the song and the album are inspired by the novel.
• Reagan Youth released a song named "Brave New World", which describes the conditions of the novel.
• The film Equilibrium, which describes a dystopian futuristic world, borrows several themes from Brave New World. The film depicts a world society created in the aftermath of a catastrophic war, in which an all-powerful world government has eliminated war, crime, and poverty through compulsory use of the sedative drug "Prozium". All races have equality and citizens of the society wear colour-coded clothing according to their class. Outside the clean, efficient cities are "The Nethers", a reference to the Savage Reservations of Brave New World. The Nethers, which encompass the ruins of cities destroyed during the war, are home to those who do not wish to live in the new society. Equilibrium borrows imagery from Brave New World such as the "T" symbol and colour-coded clothing.

Brave New World - Publications

Brave New World publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

• Brave New World
  • Aldous Huxley; Perennial; Reprint edition (September 1, 1998); ISBN 0060929871
• Brave New World Revisited
  • Aldous Huxley; Perennial; (March 1, 2000); ISBN 0060955511
• Huxley's Brave New World (Cliffs Notes)
  • Charles and Regina Higgins; Cliffs Notes; (May 30, 2000); ISBN 0764585835
• Spark Notes Brave New World
  • Sterling; (December 31, 2003); ISBN 158663366X
• Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Barron's Book Notes)
  • Anthony Astrachan, Anthony Astrakhan; Barrons Educational Series; (November 1984); ISBN 0812034058

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Brave New World", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki