Brave New World

Paperback

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Brave New World (Vintage Books, 1932; 329) by Aldous Huxley - with introductions by Margaret Atwood and David Bradshaw - is a dystopian novel that uses scientific, social and economic developments of the time to describe, through extrapolation, the way life is likely to be if we stick to that developmental trajectory tenaciously. In this book, set in A.F. 632 (the year of Our Ford or 2540 AD), mass production techniques, as developed by Henry Ford when he first built his Ford T Model, and mass consumption are the economic development paradigms. Ford's role in the story or in the life of the inhabitants of this new world was akin to that of God in the AD; for instance people say 'Oh Ford!' and not 'Oh God'. Religion is an anathema and production and consumption are its replacements.

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