Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by erin1096
Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
5.0
Somehow both nonfiction and sci-fi. Huxley's retrospection examining the time between the publishing of BNW and his post-WWII present is absolutely fascinating. Huxley's examination of his own predictions against the overlay of the fascist reality that was to come is a poignant and thought-provoking time capsule.
His predictions for the future and his attempts to guess or anticipate how various technologies and social adaptations would be adopted for the sake of governmental overreach were out of step with the reality that would come, but there is a valiant effort and there are smacks of relevance sprinkled throughout, more so sourced from an understanding of human nature than an actual ability to foresee the dastardly side of developing technologies
The retrospection in this book is much more valuable than the predictions that come later in the book. Huxley latches on to several advancements in technology and psychological theory and predicts how they could be adapted by the government for nefarious purposes. With the benefit of 70 years on my side, I'm able to pass some judgement on the accuracy of his predictions and most of them fall short of any practical relevance. These predictions are more reminiscent to the fable-esque elements of Brand New World while being repackaged in the form of sociological analysis. So that section did lack the same punch as the retrospective portion of the book, in my opinion.
The book itself is not without flaws, but the experience of reading it though, is what garners it a 5/5. It's thought-provoking, of course, but the analysis is written from such a unique perspective in such an individual time and place, that reading it is really an *experience* and that is where I gained the most value from it. The position that Huxley was in, having written a dystopian fable centered around seemingly innocuous government control and then soon after see a dictator of unseen proportions rise to power in Germany and commit atrocities on an unfathomable scale; it's a fascinating perspective and one of nuanced self-critique.
His predictions for the future and his attempts to guess or anticipate how various technologies and social adaptations would be adopted for the sake of governmental overreach were out of step with the reality that would come, but there is a valiant effort and there are smacks of relevance sprinkled throughout, more so sourced from an understanding of human nature than an actual ability to foresee the dastardly side of developing technologies
The retrospection in this book is much more valuable than the predictions that come later in the book. Huxley latches on to several advancements in technology and psychological theory and predicts how they could be adapted by the government for nefarious purposes. With the benefit of 70 years on my side, I'm able to pass some judgement on the accuracy of his predictions and most of them fall short of any practical relevance. These predictions are more reminiscent to the fable-esque elements of Brand New World while being repackaged in the form of sociological analysis. So that section did lack the same punch as the retrospective portion of the book, in my opinion.
The book itself is not without flaws, but the experience of reading it though, is what garners it a 5/5. It's thought-provoking, of course, but the analysis is written from such a unique perspective in such an individual time and place, that reading it is really an *experience* and that is where I gained the most value from it. The position that Huxley was in, having written a dystopian fable centered around seemingly innocuous government control and then soon after see a dictator of unseen proportions rise to power in Germany and commit atrocities on an unfathomable scale; it's a fascinating perspective and one of nuanced self-critique.