One member of this caste, Bernard Marx, experiences a restlessness and ennui that threatens to imperil the status quo. The only threat to this sterility is the upper caste, who run things. But everyone else came into being thanks to genetic engineering, bred in bottles and processed into standard adults in uniform batches. A few human beings, known as Savages, who were born the old-fashioned way, and retain memories of such banned books as the Bible and Shakespeare, are still to be found living in “reservations”, like zoo animals. In this benumbed realm, physical pain and old age have been eradicated and familial and emotional attachments have disappeared in place of passion, there is a drug called soma, which promises sexual oblivion. “Everybody’s happy now,” insist the citizens of Huxley’s utopian world state – and it’s almost true. Second, the novel’s terrible prescience is pushed to the fore, the parallels between Huxley’s imaginary future and our own present suddenly so close, it’s almost painful at moments. Fred Fordham’s retelling of Huxley’s 1932 novel is so sleek, owing more to the movies than to its original author’s prose – his subtly futuristic illustrations may bring to mind Fritz Lang or even Steven Spielberg (think Minority Report) – and, thanks to this, two things happen. But I was wrong to be chary: this is a book that will keep your bedside light burning long into the night. A certain weariness came over me at the prospect of this adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World I’m not much in the mood for dystopian doom and gloom right now.
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