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| A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; finally finished it! | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 10 2011, 10:17 PM (800 Views) | |
| Canis Lupis | Feb 10 2011, 10:17 PM Post #1 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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By Ford, I finally finished "A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (extra points if you made the sign of the T). A few of my friends have read it before. Some friends said it's amazing, but some said it was just plain wierd (the ones that said it was just plain wierd also didn't like "The Life of Pi," "The Lord of the Flies," and "The Catcher in the Rye" (all of which I thought were amazing!)). Me? Well, maybe I just love books, but I thought "A Brave New World" was quite amazing and imaginative. A great work of speculative fiction, if I do say so myself. Now, while it may be a great classic, I'm wanting to know: from a technological and human societal aspect, how plausible is the book (of course, that question is posed to those who read the book)? Some of the things in the book seemed plausible (then again, I know that's the job of fiction writers). I mean, it's entirely possible (though a bit unethical) to engineer different castes of people for different jobs (Alphas for brain-stimulating work, Betas for less brain-stimulating work, Gammas for the middle class, Deltas for the upper lower class, and Epsilon semi-morons for the worst of the worst jobs). And alter their appearance at that. It also seems possible to take an egg and a sperm and make a zygote out of the uterus (that's what in-vitro fertilization is today). But how plausible is it for that zygote to make multiple copies of itself? By that, I mean multiple multiples (like 72 identical zygotes from the one). The book calls this Bokanovsky's process and is only used for the Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon classes. Wikipedia article on this fictional cloning technique here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokanovsky%27s_process Another thing I'm wondering about is the process of hynopaedia. In this process, meaningless phrases are repeated over and over and over again in order to engrain them into the minds of children (who don't have parents, but are instead cultivated by scientists in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centers). Such phrases like "Ending is better than mending" (basically buy new clothes rather than mend your old ones) and "Everyone belongs to everyone else" (basically, there are no marriages, relationships, or anything of the sort. Basically, you can sleep with whoever you want one night and sleep with someone completely different the next without any consequences). All in all, I think it's a marvelous book, but I'm just wondering about plausibility. And now my brain hurts. I'm gonna take two grams of soma and go to bed.
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| Zoroaster | Feb 10 2011, 11:27 PM Post #2 |
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Fecund Fundiment
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I'm still in the middle of reading it - see my signature line... Great work - and amazing for it's time - probably the first of the "dystopian" future works, made more famous by Orwell. Another interesting fact about Aldous Huxley, he was Thomas Huxley's grandson - the Huxley who was nicknamed Darwin's Bulldog, for his championing of the theory Origin of Species by Natural Selection. |
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The Speccer Formerly Known As Magoo... My exobio project(s) : Hormizd / Zarathustra ![]() | |
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| Canis Lupis | Feb 10 2011, 11:30 PM Post #3 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Very interesting. Though of course, there are a lot of differences between Huxley's novel ("A Brave New World") and George Orwell's dystopian novel ("1984," which I'm going to read aftter I read "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston (for microbiology) and "The Overton Window" by Glenn Beck (my friend figured I'd be interested in it, so I'm gonna give it a shot)). |
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| Xenophile | Feb 10 2011, 11:58 PM Post #4 |
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Formerly known as alienboy.
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Sounds like a fascinating read. I'll have to check it out once I'm done reading my current book. Come to think of it though, I really need to get around to reading Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden. It's interesting you liked A Catcher in the Rye, Canis. I despised that book because I found it to be hopeless and depressing. Each to his own I guess. |
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| Cephylus | Feb 11 2011, 12:05 AM Post #5 |
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Torando of Terror
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The book's a great read. It does focus more on technological aspects than George Orwell's novel, but since it's not my specialty, I'm not sure if it's really plausible. Each dystopian novel has differences and what aspect the author focuses on..... A Catcher In the Rye, I didn't like the book really. Seemed a bit meaningless. |
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| Canis Lupis | Feb 11 2011, 10:54 PM Post #6 |
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I admit, it was depressing. But personally, I just hate happy endings. ![]() I'm currently watching a movie based on the book that the BBC made back in the 1980's. It actually stays quite accurate to the book (though it does explain some stuff before the start of the book). Here's the link for those who have actually read the book or just don't have enough time to read it: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3536993421073315692&hl=en&emb=1# |
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| Zoroaster | Feb 14 2011, 06:55 PM Post #7 |
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Fecund Fundiment
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Finished it last night - my copy was a "school text" with half of the front of the book a bunch of intros, analyses, and study guides... Amazing to think it was written in 1932, before television even took off... There's a movie supposedly coming out this year, with Leonardo Di Caprio supposedly. |
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The Speccer Formerly Known As Magoo... My exobio project(s) : Hormizd / Zarathustra ![]() | |
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| Canis Lupis | Feb 14 2011, 09:35 PM Post #8 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Hopefully it's good and is faithful to the book. |
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