Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

This is considered to be the foundation from which all "utopia/dystopia" SF books are laid. I was eager to read it, and although the initial ideas brought forth by the novel intrigued me, I soon became bored of the repetitive dialogue and the 2 dimensional characters. Sure this is a classic, but compared with what's available today (and against other "classics") it has little to offer except the foundation mentioned earlier. However, I must admit that because I had to read this for a SF english class, my opinions are a lot more amplified. I must give the book credit for creating the ideas about a future population that is controlled by drugs, programmed by "the system" and kept out of the way of those who are running things (i.e. "The Man"). If anything, Mr. Huxley writes a parody about the way society was going then (this book was written in 1932). I'd say it was a pretty good prediction of what is going on now. He also predicts uncannily the way test tube babies are created. I'd recommend this book to anyone that is interested in the whole futuristic dystopia thing, or someone who wants to get to know where SF comes from. I'm looking forward to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Rating: ** 1/2 (Added 1999.10.12)

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