Mankind’s indefatigable quest, curiosity of the unknown, thirst for knowledge and evolution has led to pivotal and monumental discoveries in the field of science. The necessity of exigency has played a significant role in the influx of constant exploration and diagnosis, creating a wealth of information in medicine and space that has definitely shaped our lives for good.
Over indulgence, compulsions, quantum leaps have bulwarked our desire to challenge the laws of nature. Scientists have finally managed to conceive designer babies, embryos created in laboratories with speculation rife that they could grow full term with cloned babies paving the way, just like toys manufactured in humungous quantities within factories. If science is able to cultivate and bring this to existence successfully with minimum to zero defects, imagine how it would be to have babies produced in factories and living in a world full of clones?
Aldous Huxley wrote this book ‘Brave New World’ in 1932, depicting a sordid prose of living in a dystopian world governed and proliferated by science. The first three chapters of the book were so descriptive, taxing and process-oriented that I felt like giving up reading the book, however I’m glad that I persisted. The narrative is brilliant and it makes one wonder in amazement at the author’s vivid and cerebral imagination.
Welcome to CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, where eggs are fertilized, incubated with racks and racks of test tube babies put through the Bokanovsky’s process considered to be one of the major instruments of social stability in the New World. Imagine a world where DNA is curated, conditioned and tailor-made, keeping in mind the strata of society one comes from and the kind of job one would entail. Destiny of a fertilized egg is determined by a person who foreordains and decants them as socialized human beings, dividing them into Alphas and Epsilons just like we have racial and caste system in the world today.
It’s a world deplete of free will, human emotions, relationships, morality, fear, and knowledge where minds of fertilized babies is pre-conditioned in laboratories through hypnopaedia. Science and its inventions undoubtedly come with a lot of promise and benefits but also has its pitfalls. The book covers and describes the disturbing journey of our protagonist John who came to this world through viviparous reproduction, is living a life of misery, drudgery and abject poverty comes in contact with Bernard born as an alpha, from a civilized New World. Will this chance encounter to venture into a New World be a boon or an inopportune event? No spoilers here, you’ll have to read this one to find out!
What I loved about this book was the author’s craft of building characters, adroitly portraying a dystopian world with immense foresight, proficiency of creating a division of two worlds. No wonder it’s a classic and I would definitely recommend this book.