Brave New World

The cover of the scholastic edition of the novel belies the pure smut within, to keep parents from yanking their kids out of school.

Brave New World is a world-renowned science fiction novel, written by British social critic Aldous Huxley. It depicts a utopian society of the future, one in which everyone is produced by cloning in a hatchery and forced into a caste system.

Huxley conceived Brave New World after a vacation to America, where he was terrified by American promiscuity, mass-produced consumer goods, sparkling teeth, and large portions at restaurants. He wrote the novel as a counterpoint to the optimistic predictions of the future, such as 1984, that his contemporaries were putting out. Somehow Huxley has been able to work this theme into not only a story but an entire novel, and later, a children’s toy franchise; specializing in action figures designed to shoot out those little spring-loaded missiles that seem to disappear within a few days of purchase.

The book continues to be a staple of secondary education, as it lets kids read sexually fueled literature by an author who was high on every drug known to man, including soma and acid. It is a popular book assignment in high school due to its depressing philosophy, which a student can be assigned to convert into a ponderously long essay. The book itself gives useful help on ponderousness, frequently using sentences longer than the time it takes to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, including "wardrobe malfunctions." The book is also a prime cause of teen suicides.

Plot

And yet, Brave New World is not mere pornography, but science fiction. People love their jobs (we are talking in-the-book, mind you) through subliminal messages while they sleep. So if you're a garbageman, you are genetically predisposed to love hauling, moving, and rummaging through garbage. You love the smell of rotting cabbage and are aroused by old sofa cushions, much like in certain areas of New Jersey.

People start having sex in preschool, just as they do in certain Southern U.S. states today, not to mention Holland. Also, the government freely distributes a drug known as kittens for social kitten huffing, people enjoy going out to the feelies (men to the tit-feelies, women to the pecker-feelies), cars have been replaced by helicopters (Lockheed-Martin stock is through the roof), and free will is illegal but no one even cares because it's so 600-years-ago. The Christian Era is gone and dates are stated as the "Year of Our Ford," a reference to Gerald Ford, an apparent benchmark to how gullible the population has become.

Publication of the book was delayed one hundred years, until 2031. This was the result of a quirk in the Space-Time Continuum caused by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Either that, or the State wanted to ply pupils with Ritalin, and adults with bread and circuses, for a few generations without letting them read what was happening.

Knock-offs

The cover artwork showed how it feels to be on a bad soma trip.

Brave New World was followed by a sequel titled Brave Little Toaster. The sequel is non-fiction, a review of the world's progress over thirty years, compared to Huxley's predictions in the original novel. Bottom line: Movies and drugs have gotten much better; Gerald Ford: Not as good.

Huxley himself knocked off from a massive overdose of soma. What irony.

In 2000, a heavy metal group named Iran Maiden produced an album named Brave New World. It was the group's first rock opera, and was notable for the fact that it straggled in thirty years after rock bands stopped doing rock operas; also for the fact that it has nothing to do with either rock, opera, or the Huxley novel, as none of the songs on the album have anything to do with one another.