“Brave New World”
People forget it was written in the early part of the last century, long before socialistic governments had become the norm.
“1984” presents a vision of the future where citizens are kept in line by governmental brute force. “Brave New World” though, presents a vision where citizens are controlled by government paternalism, which results in a voluntary self-enslavement to the government.
Every modern story of a dystopian future has its roots in “Brave New World.”
And, it’s easy to see “Brave New World’s” vision of the future slowly coming to pass.
There’s a book by Anthony Burgess (of Clockwork Orange fame) called “1985” in which Islam and unions take over Britain.
It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to find, but VERY ACCURATE.
What would we catogorize the plot and “action” of the ‘feely’ that Leena and John Savage went to?
From “Brave New World”....
The house lights went down; fiery letters stood out solid and as though self-supported in the darkness. THREE WEEKS IN A HELICOPTER . AN ALL-SUPER-SINGING, SYNTHETIC-TALK1NG, COLOURED, STEREOSCOPIC FEELY. WITH SYNCHRONIZED SCENT-ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT.
“Take hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair,” whispered Lenina. “Otherwise you won’t get any of the feely effects.”
The Savage did as he was told.
Those fiery letters, meanwhile, had disappeared; there were ten seconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzling and incomparably more solid-looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality, there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in one another’s arms, of a gigantic negro and a golden-haired young brachycephalic Beta-Plus female.
The Savage started. That sensation on his lips! He lifted a hand to his mouth; the titillation ceased; let his hand fall back on the metal knob; it began again. The scent organ, meanwhile, breathed pure musk. Expiringly, a sound-track super-dove cooed “Oo-ooh”; and vibrating only thirty-two times a second, a deeper than African bass made answer: “Aa-aah.” “Ooh-ah! Ooh-ah!” the stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure. “Ooh …”
The plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutes after the first Oohs and Aahs (a duet having been sung and a little love made on that famous bearskin, every hair of which–the Assistant Predestinator was perfectly right–could be separately and distinctly felt), the negro had a helicopter accident, fell on his head. Thump! what a twinge through the forehead! A chorus of ow’s and aie’s went up from the audience.
The concussion knocked all the negro’s conditioning into a cocked hat. He developed for the Beta blonde an exclusive and maniacal passion. She protested. He persisted. There were struggles, pursuits, an assault on a rival, finally a sensational kidnapping. The Beta blond was ravished away into the sky and kept there, hovering, for three weeks in a wildly anti-social tête-à-tête with the black madman. Finally, after a whole series of adventures and much aerial acrobacy three handsome young Alphas succeeded in rescuing her. The negro was packed off to an Adult Re-conditioning Centre and the film ended happily and decorously, with the Beta blonde becoming the mistress of all her three rescuers. They interrupted themselves for a moment to sing a synthetic quartet, with full super-orchestral accompaniment and gardenias on the scent organ. Then the bearskin made a final appearance and, amid a blare of saxophones, the last stereoscopic kiss faded into darkness, the last electric titillation died on the lips like a dying moth that quivers, quivers, ever more feebly, ever more faintly, and at last is quiet, quite still.
Ack!! I am discovered! Alright, I confess that I read and was influenced by "Brave New World". It seems incontrovertible that my dystopian future world must also have been illuminated by that distant light.
And of seeing Brave New World’s "vision of the future slowly coming to pass", yes, it is too painfully true. Even my thousand-year reach has not insulated my tale from the same fate.
In regard to the thread and its purpose, I have observed that as a group, readers, writers, and intellectuals in general always produce lists of books that they think they should have read and held in high esteem.
In that regard, it is puzzling that "Lolita" got such high marks. It is exceedingly artfully crafted, but it was foredoomed from its inception to have an unhappy ending. That was a societal requirement for the sin of bending society's rules.
The rest of it? Not enough Science Fiction.