Brave New World
July 15th, 2008 by HenTime to admit that I just read Brave New World for the first time. If my father has it in his collection, it must have lived on a different set of bookshelves from the rest of his golden/silver age sci fi. Fortunately my wife has it, but again it lived on a different shelf to its kin and it was only when packing books into boxes that I noticed it and thought ‘Hey, this is meant to be a bit good right?’.
And indeed it was. It’s one of those books that surprises you with how long ago it was written (1932) because it really doesn’t feel that old. Interestingly in the foreword the author comments on how he missed nuclear technology, but nowadays that doesn’t feel like much of a miss. Computers are the usual miss of books of this age, but here is where the quality shows - it assumes that things help with life and doesn’t spend time diving into them.
Story wise - it’s a utopian future in which problems are solved by making life stable and the human race stagnant. Pockets of aboriginal zoos exist, which provide a nice counter point and we experience the effect of each upon their inhabitants through the protagonists. The two sets of worlds makes it feel quite like Wells’ Time Machine, but without feeling as antiquated (of course that was published in 1895).
If anyone hasn’t read it (but you probably all have) - I recommend doing so.