A review by clmerle
Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley

4.0

I read Brave New World because of a cartoon by Stuart McMillan called Amusing Ourselves to Death. It was a comic adaptation of a book by the same title by Neal Postman. McMillan has pulled the comic at the request of the copyright holders, but you can still find the strip via search. It compared the dystopias Brave New World and 1984. In 1984 the world is controlled through fear and violence. In Brave New World by desire and drugs. They are in essence flip sides of the same coin of totalitarianism. Such a state would use both fear and desire. Most of the time through desire, through opiates for the masses, and for the obstreperous fear. The most depressing thing about both books is that we can see elements of them in our modern world. That's the danger of books. For some they are a warning. For others a how-to manual.