In the tradition of "1984" and "Brave New World"
344456
The classics: Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World", represent a mini-genre that should be constantly getting updated by contemporary authors. These short stories do this admirably. Prophetic warnings of dystopian outcomes.
3152793
It was an enjoyable read, similar in many ways to 1984. What made it so compelling were the similarities between the world of the novel and the society in which we live. It's a cautionary tale in many regards.
4101748
As with Margaret Atwood's "Hand Maid's Tale",  "Never Let Me Go" begins like a contemporary mainstream novel.  It takes awhile for the reader to realize that the world described is not the "real world".

Gradually, you catch on to the differences and learn the rules of this world, as the characters themselves learn. The mis-direction starts on the page before the first chapter, where Ishiguro indicates that the scene is "England, late 1990s". Everything is plausible.  No scifi technology would be needed to have led to this alternate world.  No major cataclysmic change.  Just a subtle change of direction -- quite natural, quite credible, and hence foreshadowing a dismal future we may yet encounter.

From the first page, you feel that something is just a little bit off. Even the typeface is disconcerting, with a lowercase "a" that looks more like a handwritten "a" (an "o" with a tail coming off to the right), instead of the usual printed "a", as here).

You also quickly notice that the narrator is a bit obsessive and oversensitive, over-interpreting every look and gesture and event.  And by keeping this up, over the course of the book, the author manages to completely redefine the basis of communication and the texture of life, including how to rad body language and context.  Ishiguor gives an otherwodly aura to ordinary situations.  You sense that there is always a mystery-to-be-solved behind what is happening, what is described, what is interpreted. Oridinay terms are used in extraordinary ways (cf. 1984, but far more subtle) -- carer, donor, possible, guardian, deferral become laden with new and sinister meanings, hinting at the difference between these people and ordinary people, between their world and ours.

What we wind up with is a bizarre coming-of-age love story, combining innocence and horror, in a situation where the simplest everyday events and decisions take on heroic implications.

This is one of the best novels published in the last 100 years.  Don't miss it.
3895883
Having first read Brave New World while in highschool, I was curious to discover what my reaction to it might be twenty years later.  Having read it a second time, I have even more respect for the work and marvel at the  predictions that Huxley  made.  While he certainly was poking fun at  society with most of his predictions, the more fearful ones certainly leave  one somewhat unsettled.  One must ask how close we have come to his Utopian  society in our modern age.  The intrusions of the press as it strives to  give us the real story might be the most frightening parallel between the  book and our society.  For all the moments when the book scares us, makes  us laugh or forces us to ponder our fate, it is a real masterpiece.  Even  more so when one considers it was written seventy years ago.  Many thanks  to my highschool English teacher who assigned it to me twenty years ago.  Here's hoping today's highschools will still allow such a book to be  available to today's students.
517949
I personally liked 1984 better because it was more realistic, but Brave New World is far more twisted.  Instead of pleasure outlawed, sex in general is outlawed.  Babies are made in test tubes.  They come out in an assembly line.  People are educated to hate things.  Each class is educated to look down on the others.  Children are encouraged to have erotic play.  The whole society is educated to take soma, a depressant.  One man from the still-normal world of New Mexico, which is called The Savage Reservation by those of the other world because sex i how babies are formed, rebels and throws soma out the window in the face of kids.  This evil story of a world I hope never becomes true is nonetheless thrilling.
2573700
Today we can find dystopia books by the dozen, but not so in 1921 when this book was written. As the foreword by Bruce Sterling in the version I read says: "We is one of the first attempts to write about the future through the consciousness of someone born there and living there."

We follows a series of "records" written by D-503, a mathematician and engineer that has created a spacecraft known as Integral, that will be used to convert different planets in the solar system to the One State, a logical dystopia were emotions and individuality are suppressed and cold logic is used to reinforce the laws and keep the population subservient. To dream or "have a soul" are literally considered diseases.

D-503 soon falls in love with a renegade called I-330, a free spirit that seems immune to the lack of individuality of the rest of the One State population. This leads D-503 through a series of discoveries of a different kind of life outside the wall that circumvents the city of the One State, as well as the struggles of his logical mind to understand feelings like love.

It is fascinating that we have only the over-logical protagonist's perspective on the matter. D-503 describes the female forms in geometrical analogies and tries to solve his new feelings like equations ("It seems I no longer live in our rational world, but in an ancient, deliriousa world of square roots of minus one.").

Like Sterling also points out in the foreword, We is responsible for several tropes that have become common-place in sci fi and dystopia literature, like: "hermetically sealed cities, synthetic food, unisex suits, Metropolis-like crowds of drones marching through cyclopean apartment blocks, whizzing, roaring trips in giant spaceships, mind control through brain surgery."

The pacing may appear a bit dated for modern readers and the character a struggle to identify with, but We rewards the ones who keep on reading with a fascinating story that goes well beyond just it's importance in the history of sci fi literature.
1303004
I'd somehow missed reading this in high school but am not  disappointed now that I've finally read this iconic work of fiction.  Riveting, Brave New World is a stark, disturbing, cautionary tale of an empty future society and the criminalization of all things meaningful.  Well worth reading if you also missed this classic.
4380678
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a brilliant book both as a work of fiction and satire. Huxley covers topics of the arts, science, religion, faith, philosophy, and morality in this novel. This is not your average science fiction novel by any stretch of the imagination.
It is definitely worth a second read.
  Huxley's work is perhaps one of the original dystopian novels (which are becoming increasingly more popular today). In Brave New World, the future holds no pain, aging, or discomfort. Everything is preprogrammed. Totalitarianism exists however in a format in which citizens are conditioned to love whatever their specific function (however menial or unpleasant) in society is. Only the savages live according to the old ways - with religion, aging, marriage and traditions. This is far apart from the average citizen on reservations.
  The plot takes off, when Bernard a man dissatisfied with life meets a young man born on a reservation whose mother used to be a part of the new society. The mother and "savage" return to civilization. Upon the return, the young man finds himself caught between worlds. He was never accepted in the reservation and h cannot understand the new ways that are considered civilized.
  I would highly recommend this to anyone. It is an outstanding look at civilization, the nature of man, and morality. If you have read this and enjoyed it I would recommend 1984 by George Orwell, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I will also recommend the television series Futurama by Matt Groening (creator of the Simpsons). Groening took many ideas from Brave New World and 1984 to produce a darkly funny sitcom.
1016461
A dystopian novel like 1984 or Brave New World.  Interesting that most characters found ways to circumvent the "new order" by bending the rules or creating underground groups.  Offred adapted her memories to ease the pain of losing her husband and daughter.  We never find out her final fate, so our own imagination must supply it.  The technique introduced at the end of discussing the tale in a future symposium let's us know that Offred's story survived even if she didn't.
4743599
Huxley's Brave New World has often been described as a chilling prediction of a sterile future world where people are genetically engineered into 'castes' and are unable to advance or better themselves.
But is this such a bad world?  Someone has to clean toilets.  Someone has to sweep streets and collect garbage.  Would it not be better to have these jobs done by people who are happy with their lives.  In Brave New World everyone below the top caste is inbred with an awe for the Alpha group who are the leaders, movers and shakers of the world.  There is no fear of rebellion.  People live lives of peace, harmony and tranquility.
So what is wrong with this picture?  Why do we so fear the very things we seek?  What is it in human nature that we want the savage to take root amongst us and tear down our sacred cows?  Indeed the savage is the only 'personality' in this book.
Brave New Word is relevant because it questions our view of the society we want.  In reality we do not want to live a life of social outings and days on the golf course.  Man needs adversity in order to thrive.  What is it in the nature of man that craves hardship, dirt, pain and risk?  What does it say about us as a race?
If you haven't read this book, you should.  It is one of those must reads which can change the way you think about life.  In style it is short, sterile and spare, a reflection perhaps, of life in the Brave New World.  There is no adventure here, no great story that will thrill you.  But this is a book you will not forget.
4039855
It seems to me that Huxley's reply to Orwell's 1984 is "At least your dystopia can produce an interesting story."
I found BNW dull at times, compelling at others, but mostly both. This pivotal work of political science fiction definitely made me think twice about certain developments occuring in today's judgemental and materialistic society, and the direction I would have us go from here.
2816548
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was the scion of a family of brilliant scientists, doctors and intellectuals. His 1932 utopian novel
Brave New World" is his most famous achievement in a prolific career as author, philosopher and visionary. Huxley would nod with a knowing wink if he would return to life toda and see how many of his projection of future society have already come true.
  The title of the work is taken from the character Miranda's line in Shakespeare's play "The Tempest." Miranda says, "O brave new world that has such people in it"
The Story: The time is set in the future in London. Instead of God the populace worships Henry Ford. The novel opens at the
Central London Hatchery Center in the year 632 After Ford. From fertilized embryos person are hatched to serve a set role in society from the intellectually elite Alphas to the drone like Epsilons. Piped music plays while children seep to program them. Everyone is to be happy and kept youthful. There are no families. Sex is only to provide enjoyment. The society has produced people who are bland souless cogs of the community. Individualism is seen as a crime against the state. Into this utopia we meet:
Bernard Marx-A misfit who is banished to Iceland; Lenina Crowe-A worker in the London Hatchery Center who is basically mindless while courting men attracted by her "pneumatic" figure. Mustapha Mond is a suave and worldy man who is one of the World Controllers. He is a cynical former physicist.  Linda and her son John (the Savage) live on the Indian reservation in New Mexico visited by Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowe (the names are an obvious bow to Marx and Lenin). She will die in a sterile setting back in London. Her son John reads Shakespeare and commits suicide rather than live in the utopian world of modern London.
  Huxley rejects the utopian world of sterility represented in modern London and also the primitivism on display on the New Mexican Indian Reservation.
  This book will get you thinking about our own lives in the 21st world of cyberspace and depersonalization. Huxley was a genius!
4952166
I think Orwell is one of the English language's best writers.  1984 is his master-work.  However, to really grasp many of the themes in 1984 one must also look at Orwell's other political writings.  (There is an excellent collection of them on the Web - search for 'George Orwell' in Yahoo).
 Much of what I would say about 1984 has already been said here.  However, it never fails to amuse me when socialists and left-wingers seek to cast 1984 as an attack on capitalism.  Even the little piece at the end of the edition offered for sale here tries desperately to protest that Big Brother and Ingsoc might also be the product of capitalism.  If you believe this, ask yourself how well the words 'laissez-faire' would fit into Newspeak.
 It is absolutely true that Orwell was a 'democratic socialist.'  It is also absolutely true, and Orwell knew, that democracy could produce totalitarianism.  1984 is a critique of two things: relativism (the view that there is no objective truth), and the planner's mentality (that endemic to both the left and right).  To think of it as a criticism of any purely economic system is just plain silly.
3458595
1984 is quite the classic. Not just in the sense of it having literary merit, but it has stood the test of time and is relevant today and it will probably still be relevant for several years. I have been told to read it for several years, but I finally got around to it because my friend and I did a book exchange and this is the one he chose for me to read. I really loved reading this and the experience of discovering these characters and this world for the first time. This is definitely a book that needs to be re-read, but I am content for now with my first read through.  In this book, Winston Smith lives in a totalitarian society. He is constantly being watched and has no freedom. He knew of a time before the world was like this, but he does not know how to change it to go back. I really liked this contrast that showed up within the characters. There were characters that knew of the world before and the characters that only knew about after. These different contexts led to an interesting difference on their views of resistance and society in general. Although there are a few passages that seem to drag on, they are not out of place. They are there for purposes of indoctrination as well as to show the monotony of existence in this society. Not only was there so much depth and meaning in every action, it was full of symbols that I loved. My favorite being the paperweight, I do not want to ruin anything, but there is so much meaning inside that tiny glass bubble. Adam Smith imagines a perfect world within the bubble of the paperweight, he does not realize the double meaning within it that the paperweight is also where he lives. I do not want to say much about the plot as it is not much of a plot, and more of a narrative. It is also just one of those books where the plot is not what draws the reader in, but it is the characters and the ideas they represent. I really loved all of the subtle details within the descriptions and even the diction style. These details were subtle so that the ending was jarring, but then when I looked back, they became apparent and made the ending make sense. A lot of people seem to have beef with the ending, but I find it very fitting and it makes me want to start the book all over again.
4649913
Brave New World Book Review by Benjamin Castillo

 Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a depiction of how the future will be like from his view point. Even though the future may not be how he describes it to be, where everything is being controlled by the government, the book still has timeless themes. One main idea is that there is no such thing as perfect happiness or a utopian society. Another is the relationship between stability versus individuality. Through his use of interesting characters and creative solutions, Huxley is able to carry out and explain the themes well.

 One theme that personally stood out to me is stability versus individuality. The New World is a society based on technology, where Ford, representing their god, is worshipped. Ford symbolizes technology and the sense of everybody working together. The people are all created in labs and are conditioned to be in a certain class. The citizens only know about and want to be in the specific class that they were born into. This allows for stability among the people since they are happy with their lives. The people are conditioned to do the job they are assigned to and to never go against the government. Lenina, one of Huxely's well-developed characters, is a prime example of this. However, there are still some "bad eggs" in the "perfect society," such as Bernard. He is a top Alpha. Alphas are supposed to be handsome, tall, and loved by everyone, but Bernard doesn't fit the Alpha mold. So he seeks the approval of others. Bernard's desire to fit into his society shows that individuality is not welcome in this society.

  Similar to Bernard, John is also seen as an outsider from the New World. His individuality comes from his past. He is from the Savage Reservation, where an ancient tribal group lives. They still believe in natural birth and believe in ancient religious and spiritual rituals. But John's mom is from the New World. Thus, John has parts from both worlds. He was introduced into the New World by Bernard and was used as an example of what not to be. He was seen by the New World society like a circus animal. John initially loved the New World, but then became disgusted by it. He came to the New World thinking that it's the best place ever. John thought that he would be accepted in the New World since everybody there loves each other and are happy. But once he got there, he saw that the people didn't have the same values or beliefs that he had gotten from the Savage Reservation, which were monogamy and morality. So he couldn't live the way he wanted to because it wouldn't have been accepted. So once again, individuality is disallowed in the New World for the purpose of stability.

 The New World society and government has to be uniformed in order for it to be stable and work well. Individuality loses against stability because it shows that if you try to show your individuality, you will be attacked for it. Thus, individuality does not work for the New World society. Our society also witnesses the same struggle between stability and individuality. Jails, retiring homes, and mental asylums are some ways we separate "abnormal" people. One can always try to who one's individuality, but society might not always approve of it.

 Huxley has great ideas and shows them well throughout the book. It is an overall good book, but I would recommend it more for the science fiction demographic. The book has a lot of specific terms that requires readers to have some background knowledge in science and technology in order for them to understand the story well. However, the book still has themes that our world deals with and therefore, it is worth the read.
3441948
Written in 1932, perhaps Huxley was looking at the extremes of communism and Naziism which attempted to shape society into a utopian country filled with happy workers that were completely loyal and obedient. Huxley saw that despite the technological advances and relative peace these places offered, there was something insidious in any design which sought to so rigidly constrict its people. Like George Orwell in his book 1984, Huxley sought to educate the world through entertainment, and humanize the the dangers of a totalitarian state in an unforgettable way
4891815
Is your version of the world a world without love, parents, religion, unconventional thinking, a caste system, and a drug that will make everything better? If so, Brave New World is a book you will devour and enjoy. This dystopian novel is not my ideal version of the world. However, I do believe it presents a few ideas that we should learn to avoid from reading this book. In Brave New World the ideal society exists. It is carefully crafted by the controllers and everyone has their purpose and place. However, Bernard Marx is unhappy with this society. He tires of the promiscuity and people without unusual thinking. Also, people tease and gossip about Barnard because he is not your typical Alpha male. Bernard decides to visit a Savage compound where he makes a startling discovery that will change his world and this idealized version of perfection forever. This book will leave a reader exploring their version of the world and pondering what freedom truly represents. There is rampant symbolism and themes explored in this book and it will leave the reader free to make their own interpretations of the novel. A very thought-provoking book! I would recommend Brave New World to readers who enjoy dystopian novels.