spectru
4/15/2014
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is such a famous book. It predates Orwell's 1984, with which it is so much compared, by almost two decades. I first read Brave New World soon after reading 1984, years ago, but I had lost the memory of it other than the barest impressions, and so reread it. The two both describe highly controlled future societies, but there the similarity ends. 1984 is the quintessential dystopian novel, against which all others are to be judged. Brave New World is more about a far future utopia, albeit a disturbing utopia. The society portrayed in Brave New World is much more similar to Ira Levin's This Perfect Day, which to my mind is the better one of the two. Nevertheless, I'm glad I reread it. It completes my rereading of these three novels that are often grouped together as the definers of a genre.