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effgeesstories 's review for:
Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited
by Aldous Huxley
To be perfectly honest with everyone, this was my least favorite of the Big Three dystopian novels of the mid-Twentieth Century, the other two being 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. Do I mean to say it's a waste of time, or that I didn't enjoy it? No. I just think that the other books, from the vantage point of 2017, seem more prophetic. But, in Huxley's defense, this was not supposed to be the "near future"; it was a couple hundred years out. So perhaps in another 25 or 50 years, this will seem like the prophetic book.
However, whatever he may have not gotten quite right in BNW, he nailed in Brave New World Revisited, which was published in 1958 (BNW was published in 1932). There are a couple of weak chapters: Chapter II is about eugenics, which most people now consider a settled issue. Chapter VIII is called "Chemical Persuasion" and contains somewhat weak, or perhaps naive, descriptions of psychoactive drugs, But in between, his discussions of the possible roads to totalitarianism, both of the 1984 type and the BraveNew World type, are spot-on, even while some of the specific terms have become obsolete.
I would say to read this two-books-in-one edition and get both the classic novel and his thoughts on totalitarianism. But if you can't or won't read both, go for Brave New World Revisited.
However, whatever he may have not gotten quite right in BNW, he nailed in Brave New World Revisited, which was published in 1958 (BNW was published in 1932). There are a couple of weak chapters: Chapter II is about eugenics, which most people now consider a settled issue. Chapter VIII is called "Chemical Persuasion" and contains somewhat weak, or perhaps naive, descriptions of psychoactive drugs, But in between, his discussions of the possible roads to totalitarianism, both of the 1984 type and the BraveNew World type, are spot-on, even while some of the specific terms have become obsolete.
I would say to read this two-books-in-one edition and get both the classic novel and his thoughts on totalitarianism. But if you can't or won't read both, go for Brave New World Revisited.