{"id":445,"date":"2015-08-01T23:57:28","date_gmt":"2015-08-01T21:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/?p=445"},"modified":"2015-08-02T00:07:41","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T22:07:41","slug":"brave-new-world-review-hug-me-till-you-drug-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/brave-new-world-review-hug-me-till-you-drug-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Brave New World Review: Hug Me \u2018Till You Drug Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like reading old science fiction from time to time. It\u2019s interesting in the sense that you get to see what those people thought the world of today [or the far future] might look like. Some of these extrapolations are interesting in a sad sort of way, like the fragmented dog-lore of the \u201cCity\u201d stories [by Clifford D. Simak, which is absolutely worth your time.] or the absolutely terrifying, a la \u201cFahrenheit 451.\u201d [which needs to be read, but you need to be in a very specific mood to do so.]<\/p>\n

I read two basic kinds of fiction, really: science fiction and fantasy. While looking at my bookshelf, I realized that I hadn\u2019t read a good, solid, thoughtful piece of science fiction in a long, long while. \u201cReady, Player One<\/a>\u201d is an interesting book, but it\u2019s not thought provoking. We already know that big media exists. We already know that it is desperately trying to take over the internet. We already know that this is something we have to stop.<\/p>\n

So, I was looking for something that talked about the future and talked about what we might experience there. Speculative fiction.<\/p>\n

I have a pretty bad habit of buying books and then almost never reading them [like I have a habit of buying games and never playing them, because they\u2019re pretty cheap \u2013 that\u2019s half the reason this blog even exists \u2013 to get through some of the morass of media I have at my disposal] and Aldous Huxley\u2019s book has been sitting on my shelf for…a very long time. I bought it along with a couple of other far-fiction books [\u201cCity\u201d and \u201cStranger In A Strange Land\u201d \u2013 for the curious.] but then never got around to reading it.<\/p>\n

\"Huxley's<\/a>
This German Cover is so beautiful.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, I took it down from the book shelf and settled myself in the lounge, with a heater and got to reading.<\/p>\n

My first reaction to the first third of the book? This is chilling. This is exactly the kind of future we don\u2019t want. But that, again, is half of Huxley\u2019s point.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s talk about that for a bit: in this particular work of fiction, it\u2019s 600 years into the future. This particular future is a Utopia. [or, really, a very scary dystopia, if you\u2019re thinking about it that way] In this particular Utopia, no one wants for anything. There\u2019s all the food you can eat, no overcrowding, everyone lives in a decent house with enough room to spare, the people all look neat and tidy and clean and the cities are functioning, perfect units. People fly around in choppers that they have personal licenses for. [much in the same way you would take a car to work, you take a helicopter in this book]<\/p>\n

It all seems wonderful until you realize how they got there, you see, people aren\u2019t born, they\u2019re made. You take an embryo, you stick it in a glass tube and then you let it grow slowly, while you do all kinds of \u201ctraining\u201d to the embryo. Are they lower caste and will they work in a factory? Get them used to sulphur and the like by making sure the baby gets a good dosing of it so that he can build up stamina against it. Will they be doing meaningless jobs? Put them in a room when they\u2019re babies and then condition them through shock therapy that books and nature are bad. Jobs are good.<\/p>\n

Most horrifying? All the lower caste jobs are reserved for thousands of identical twins that are grown specifically for that role in life. The only people who are free are Alphas, but…even Alpha-hood comes with a price.<\/p>\n

Alphas have access to all the leisure time they want and all the sex they crave, just so long as they don\u2019t think about the big things. And they\u2019re conditioned to not think about the big things by hypnopaedia, a sleep-therapy that repeats \u201csocial messages\u201d over and over again:\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone is happy, here. Everyone belongs to everyone else.<\/p>\n

And if you get unhappy? Take soma. Soma\u2019s a kind of anti-depressant that sends people on a \u201choliday\u201d \u2013 a little sends you \u201coff\u201d for a couple of hours, but a lot will send you off for a few days. In this drugged state, no one can reach you.<\/p>\n

\"There<\/a>
An older edition cover. The gryphon clearly represents being outmoded.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The only places left that run like the old world are \u201cSavage Reservations\u201d where people are allowed to cling to \u201cthe old ways\u201d \u2013 having a mother and father, having gods \u2013 all of these are part and parcel of living in a Savage Reservation. And it is here [almost half way through the book, I might add] that the counterpoint to this world starts showing up in the form of John, a young man who wants to see \u201ccivilization\u201d but is, then, nauseated by what he finds. [as anyone would be]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an interesting, eerie read and \u2013 for the most part, Huxley\u2019s prose is pretty good \u2013 sometimes, it\u2019s even poetic and sings with the sort of intensity you don\u2019t normally find in modern writing, but there are issues, too. He has a thing for the word pneumatic and he describes a ton of stuff with the adjective. Dear Aldous. Please don\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

The other major problem is the last third of the book. There\u2019s a very specific confrontation \u2013 a kind of clash of ideologies – that happens, but you have to absolutely suspend disbelief, because there\u2019s no way that this argument should even work, and, thus, it ends up feeling a bit clunky.<\/p>\n

But it will make you think. Make you consider the ideas of Utopia. Will make you question whether we should pursue absolute happiness above all else. And for that reason alone, it is absolutely worth reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like reading old science fiction from time to time. It\u2019s interesting in the sense that you get to see what those people thought the world of today [or the far future] might look like. Some of these extrapolations are interesting in a sad sort of way, like the fragmented<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[65,61,66,64],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":446,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions\/446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}