So D.B. and I cheated a bit, and allowed ourselves to handpick our first pair of novels. I went for Huxley's 1932 novel, Brave New World. Good gravy what an incredible book.
The story is set in London 2540 (or the Year of our Ford 632), where society has set up an ultra-strict caste system based on genetic developments. The higher castes are required to engage in organized sex rituals and consume a government issued hallucinogen, soma. The story follows (at first) Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne, first in their day to day life and eventually on holiday at the Savage Reservation in New Mexico.
The book feels startlingly current, in both content and writing style. The book imagines a future society where recreational sex and drug use are government sanctioned cornerstones. All this is even more shocking when remembering that this book was written 80 years ago.
Structurally, the book is watertight. I love how Huxley switches focus midway from Lenina and Bernard to John. The big shift in protagonist occurs at the same time Lenina and Bernard bring the Savage back to London, and beautifully disrupts not only the New World State's society, but also the reader.
As a writer, Huxley is a very interesting compliment to Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby is the other book of our pair). Fitzgerald is so clearly a master of imagery rife with poetic flairs. Huxley is terse. Not as spare as, say, Hemingway, but he reveals the chilling details of the world in flashes and glimpses. I still get chills recalling two brief lines from a nursery rhyme: THE CAT IS ON THE MAT. THE TOT IS IN THE POT. And I won't give it away, but I will never forget the austere final lines of the book.
RECOMMENDATION? Read this book! Yes. Read it. It is rightfully near the top of the list and feels incredibly contemporary. SO MUCH modern science fiction (particularly sci-fi depicting dystopian societies) steals heavily from this (and 1984), so if you haven't yet, pay your dues by reading the original.
Up next is Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby...
-N.C.
