In the swirl of dystopian novels, movies and video series that haunt my mind, I had the idea that I had read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I hadn't read it. The Brave New World is a bright, fun, full of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but at the same time it is a genetically engineered hell where no one is allowed solitude and thinking will eventually get one banished to a remote island.
The utopia Huxley imagines is more comprehensive and creepy than George Orwell's 1984, which imposes its horror on an existing society, much like the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Mao's China. The Brave New World eliminated birth and parents and family, the state is all. Children are grown from embryos and seeded in five categories: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon in descending order of mental capacity.
The population gets daily doses of the drug Soma to keep everyone happy. Sex is entirely recreational with woman wearing contraceptive bandoliers. Entertainment is everywhere. Solitude forbidden. The only books are engineering and operating manuals.
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 follows Huxley in the sense that entertainment--the screens--are the real center of control. Burning books is almost unnecessary. Most people don't want them. They want interactive video.
The video series Pluribus is a another twist on Huxley. A pandemic makes the whole world "nice" except a dozen people. The question that animates the series: "Do want to live in a world without conflict? What price will we pay?"
All dystopian novels in the past century are inspired to some extent by WE written by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
I am glad I read it, but won't reread it. In one sense Huxley got closer to modern reality than anyone else. But while his predictions are amazing, he is not a great storyteller. I never found myself absorbed into the world of the novel the way I did in reading A Canticle for Liebowitz--the post-nuclear war dystopia by Walter Miller Jr. The irony and artistry of Miller is wonderful.
