Brave New World v. 1984

[Ramo]

Yes. Not a bad book, but IIRC it mixed up various mathematical terms, which kept getting on my nerves. I suppose he should get props for anticipating the totalitirian tendencies of the Soviet Union immediately after the Revolution.

Darkness at Noon is pretty good. Checked it out right after reading its book review by Orwell, actually...

[flash9286]

In a related note, just ordered Slaughterhouse-five off Amazon marketplace. Cost me 6 dollars including shipping . Hopefully, it is as good as people say it is.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by flash9286
In a related note, just ordered Slaughterhouse-five off Amazon marketplace. Cost me 6 dollars including shipping . Hopefully, it is as good as people say it is.

I reread it recently, after having first read it 20+ years ago in either high school or college. It holds up well, which is not true of a lot of Vonnegut.

[flash9286]

This will be my first Vonnegut book, been meaning to read one of his books for sometime.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by flash9286
This will be my first Vonnegut book, been meaning to read one of his books for sometime.

Slaughterhouse Five is his best work, but I remember really liking Slapstick and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, too.

[Ramo]

Nah. Cat's Cradle and particularly Mother Night are better.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Ramo
Nah. Cat's Cradle and particularly Mother Night are better.

Yeah, I forgot about Cat's Cradle; probably his next-best book after Slaughterhouse. But I confess I found Mother Night to be more of an idea dressed up as a novel. Oh well; de gustibus non est disputandum.

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Elok
Aside from what's already been mentioned, science is destabilizing just because it introduces new ways of looking at the world, and for it to be effective at all it has to be so uncontrolled that there's no way to prevent a sudden revolution in ideas. Major scientific discoveries almost always introduce tough questions of some sort WRT how to implement the huge changes they cause into the old society which discovered them. E.g., supposing they'd discovered immortality, at the very least there'd be a gigantic overhaul of their society as the cloning facilities and hospitals shut down.

Also, the Alphas are very bright, but that's part of the problem--it's exceptionally bright Alphas like Bernard and Helmholtz who start chafing at even the light constraints of their society, because they can think outside superficially imposed limitations. Preventing them from being inquisitive about the world would require work of very high sophistication and complexity, i.e. something pioneering and bold. They do their best to smother it with sensory pleasures and teaching work instead, but there's still a danger to the society that can't be eliminated, because you need some minority that's got the brains to see how it all fits together in order to have a safe and working civilization.

The risk is that, since they have the cognitive power to see the whole picture and make value judgments about it, they'll see their jobs and not want to do them, as occurs in the book. They don't succeed precisely because there's a colossal critical mass of people who no longer possess the ability to look further ahead than the very next day and their dose of soma. They freak out at the slightest possibility of change or self-denial. Without those idiot Deltas and Epsilons (and to a lesser extent Gammas), society would be totally unstable.

Yes, yes, but from what I've read the betans seem perfectly content in a hedonistic society so the question remains why not eliminate the lower clases by replacing them with technology and creating a society that wold focus on scientific achivement (with only the betas in uncreative posts) and allow a limited democracy (only for alphas, an extension of the oligarhical system in BNW). You might ask where the wast surpluses might go? Grand projects; like terraforming Mars, artificialy reality worlds where you could be downloaded before death or even a Dyson sphere eventualy. There are plenty of ways to spend superflues resources. The bored quasi-intelectual alphas? How do you prevent them from changing your society? Virtual worlds (CivXI )where they can spend their leisure time; an evolutionary extension of MMO's.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Zkribbler

On the other hand, Brave New World was a great movie And the nude scenes were stupendous!

Btw, the video store called and said that if you don't return Brave Nude World by Friday, you're going to have to buy it.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by nostromo
Anybody read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29

That's the only one of these books that I have read.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ramo
Nah. Cat's Cradle and particularly Mother Night are better.

Mother Night!

Have you seen the movie?

[Blaupanzer]

Brave New World provided a dystopic view of a utopian vision of the post-WWII world. It is more interesting as a view from the outside than an understanding of how they got there.

1984 is very much a "how they got there" novel. As such it reveals both methods and outcomes to ordinary people (e.g., us) in a way that can be comprehended and turned aside. It is also a satire, as noted previously.

1984 is a much better, more relevant presentation for those of us who wish to participate in the making of our own societies. BNW is mostly irrelevant now as we no longer claim to dream of a multi-classed future as a goal. Thus, 1984 is clearly the better work if one is using relevancy as the measure. Neither, IMHO, is particularly well written from a literary critic point of view.