1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

2. Biographical Details
His family were members of the English ruling class and intellectual elite.
An eye injury made him unfit for active service in W.W.I. or engage in scientific work.
Brave New World was written over a four month period in This was after WWI. and at the onslaught of the Great Depression. This was also before Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and Joseph Stalin became responsible for the deaths of millions of people in Germany.
It took him four months to write.
He died on November 22, 1963 (the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated).
A satirical piece of fiction, not scientific prophecy

3. Brave New World is an unsettling, loveless and even sinister place

4. Social structure 10 World Controllers Caste System
Alphas (ruling elite)
Alphas (elite) - grey
Betas-bottle green/mulberry
Gammas-leaf green
Deltas-khaki
Epsilons-lowest, black

5. Science fiction is set in the future, but it is frequently a vehicle for satirizing conditions in the present.
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.” Jonathan Swift
Satire (n.) – A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.

6. Huxley’s Dystopic View
Propaganda—mass media news and advertising
Psychology—conditioning, hypnopaedia
Biology—genetic engineering (“build-a-baby”)
Sociology—crowd psychology; caste system
Entertainment—distraction, sensation
Drugs—escape
Physical environment—comfort, monotony, stability, class-based
Consumption—artificial substances over natural, organic substances (food is genetically engineered or synthetic; shelter is cookie-cutter; clothing is produced by cheap 3rd world labour; services are outsourced overseas; pets are cloned)

7. Unchecked Science and Technology
Science has become the means of control and enslavement.
Humanity as we know has been made obsolete,
conception, birth, growth are conducted in test tubes, bottles, and conditioning rooms
Individuality is submerged in the larger “state identity” where “everyone belongs to everyone else”
religion, spirituality is replaced by endlessly repeated, clichéd “catechisms” and hypnopaedic soundbites
nature, anything organic, has been supplanted by artificiality
rationality, reasoning are replaced by mindless conditioning

8. Satiric Techniques
Irony, especially verbal irony which is a contrast between what is said and what is really meant
Sarcasm
Understatement
Overstatement or hyperbole
Analogy
Parody

9. Irony
Community: No privacy, no solitude, no independent thought or action.
Identity: No individuality, no uniqueness, no personal expression; no choices; identity is synonymous with class and nothing else.
Stability: No progression; stasis; stagnation.
In the hands of the totalitarian-minded controllers, science and “progress” provide the means for completely obliterating the individual!