Book review: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

2026-03-24 BOOK-REVIEW

This book was written in 1931—95 years ago! I'm pretty sure that people have been commenting on how this book is "so relevant, especially now!" for the past 95 years, and I get the feeling that they'll be doing so for many more years to come. It's hard to tell if Brave New World taps into deep fears that we have with modern society, or if it is actually the template from which those fears were formed. As I read this book, I feel like it so neatly slotted itself into the context of all the other science fiction that I've read over the years: books, movies, and games, from Cloud Atlas to We Happy Few and back to Wall-E. I finally understand why it's always compared to Nineteen Eighty Four; these books seem to have provided the two moulds that all of our dystopias have been stamped from.

Brave New World is a dystopian science fiction novel (can I call it a novella?) that tells of a society that has had all of the messiness and struggle of human life engineered out of it completely. Being written before the age of computers, it depicts a true retro-futuristic world—I kept thinking of the movie Gattaca, with good-looking, well-dressed protagonists navigating a glitzy art deco world. People are all deliberate in vitro creations, who are then indoctrinated in their sleep, in order to fill pre-determined roles. Everybody is given a drug, "soma", which keeps them happy and docile. After work, they engage in a (sometimes literal) orgy of shallow gratifications.

There's more to unpack here than I'm qualified for, but even I found plenty of food for thought. It's easy to see how timeless the concerns posed in the book are: every generation fears that the next has abandoned the more meaningful aspects of human existence, and is then proven wrong. Each of us feels like society is on the verge of collapse, and some new trend or technology will be the cause. But, again: it's been 95 years, and we're still having these conversations. Perhaps the issue here is that, at some point, each of us just fails to relate as society changes around us.

But, the book addresses that, too! Later on, the old and new worlds cross paths, and we get to see members of each society failing to understand the other. Both societies have serious problems (honestly, most of the characters aren't very likeable or relatable), and what at first glance seemed to be a cautionary tale about capitalism, consumerism, and superficiality doesn't exactly present a good alternative. Still, the horror of the modern society that the book depicts can't be denied; a common theme throughout the book is how much human relationships have been devalued in favour of short-term pleasures.

I picked this book up right as I'm having my own mid-life crisis of confidence in our society. The GenAI revolution is threatening to end all "knowledge work" jobs as we know them, while marketing firms and Big Tech continue to assert control over our lives en masse. So, of course, my first instinct was to hold it up as an example of all the evils we're gleefully charging towards. But on further reflection, perhaps there's some solace to be gleaned from its timelessness. Perhaps we can have faith that future generations, while seemingly always different from our own, will never stop feeling and dreaming and striving and revelling in all the things that make us human.

Despite being written almost a hundred years ago, I found the prose very modern and easy to get through (I finished most of the book in a single sitting!). As short and powerful as it is, Brave New World definitely is a must-read. Though, perhaps it's best saved for a moment when you're feeling a bit more optimistic about our future.