No one ever mentions We http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

We is great, and remarkably similar to Brave New World. I like the mini-controversy surrounding it, here it is as summarized on Wikipedia:

"...in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World as a reaction to H.G. Wells' utopias long before he had heard of We. According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying. Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.""[1]

If Huxley hadn't read We he was def. channeling Zamyatin's aura somehow or another.

Vonnegut is too hard on himself saying Player Piano was a rip off of Brave New World. It is great in it's own right.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

Have read it! Deserves a read. Because it's not by an Anglo-American writer I'd say it gets ignored somewhat. Besides, it's not very famous unless you like dystopian fiction and seek out a lot of it. Also, author's name: Yevgeny Zamyatin is a stonking name.

Another book I just finished: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Perfect_Day by the author of Rosemary's Baby.

A really smart person I know read Brave New World and thought it was a Utopian novel. At least, so they said.

It is a utopian novel, in one interpretation. That interpretation views it as about how utopia isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be.

The Scottish writer Iain M. Banks has come up with a rather splendid utopia in his Culture novels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture).

As he notes this causes a bit of a problem for a novelist in that a true utopia is actually pretty boring - so imperfections pretty much have to be introduced to give you something to write about.

[NB: I would be more than happy to become a Culture ambassador, if anyone is listening ;-)]

Well, yes, but possibly it's still better than our present society, which is the key question.

It's utopia in the since that pleasure is used to control people instead of pain. The basis of both novels is control. The people in power always want to control those who are not in power, and that is what the individual must always be on guard against.

I look at TV as a type of soma. Imagine if tomorrow TV* was gone. What would people do? No longer could they easily escape from the things they don't want to think about. I'm guessing some would turn to drugs, but many others (I hope anyway) would wake up and realize their own reality and thoughts instead just what has been spoon fed to them over the years.

* Like a lot of other 'drugs' TV has many good uses for information and entertainment. The problem arises when large parts of the population watch so many hours/day.

It's not about control; the world-controllers are not power-mad dictators, they are the architects of a great society. They decided that happiness was the most important thing to maximize and created a society in which everyone is happy. They, unlike the rulers of Oceania, do not seek power and control for its own sake, they seek it in order to do what must be done for the benefit of society. Brave New World is not about freedom from control, as it is in 1984, it's about what we value as a society. It questions whether happiness is so worthy a goal and shows us the sacrifices we must make for happiness.

Not all men want to be free; most just want fair masters.

We have had TV for only about 60 or 70 years. I don't think people in 1910 were more awake! They were sent to fight wars instead of left to watch telly and do whatever they like.