Aldous Huxley: Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited (AudiobookFormat, 2006, bnpublishing.com)
MP3 CD, 340 pages
Published Jan. 30, 2006 by bnpublishing.com.
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley prophesied a capitalist civilization, which had been reconstituted through scientific and psychological engineering, a world in which people are genetically designed to be passive and useful to the ruling class. Huxley opens the book by allowing the reader to eavesdrop on the tour of the fertilizing Room of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning center, where the high tech reproduction takes place. One of the characters, Bernard Marx, seems alone, harboring an ill-defined longing to break free. Satirical and disturbing, Brave New World is set some 600 years into the future. Reproduction is controlled through genetic engineering, and people are bred into a rigid class system. As they mature, they are conditioned to be happy with the roles that society has created for them.
The synopsis is a very accurate description of this collection of short stories that range from predictable to downright odd.
I did not have to read this book as part of my high school/college education, and I am sad for that. There are a lot of interesting ideas put forth in this book. It's a good read, but mainly this is a book that makes you sit down and think. I knew this was the case, and so was not disappointed at the character or overall plot, in fact, I guess it reads like a book from those times rather than something written today. However, the themes and ideas were incredible and well ahead of their time. The world is presented as an utopia, but as you explore it you're not quite sure if that's the right word. This is a frightening world to live in and I can totally see the point in comparing it to other works like Orwell's 1984 or Moore's Utopia.
