Dystopia Imagined: “Brave New World” and “Nineteen Eighty-four”

Aldous Huxley and George Orwell wrote two of the greatest books of the twentieth century to take up the theme of a dystopian future. They were different in many respects and it has been sport for commentators to assess how well each of them prognosticated. Both books are impressive works of imagination; certainly, the authors primarily wrote the books not as science fiction or fantasy or predictions of the future but to warn humanity of the dangers we face. At the time, Orwell already seemed dark, sober and not far from the post-war reality; Huxley, writing before the war or Hitler, seemed more camp and satirical.

In his foreword of 1946, Huxley himself pointed out how much closer humanity was to his prognostications and while he noted significant gaps, “all things considered it looks as though Utopia were far closer to us than anyone, only fifteen years ago, could have imagined”. (Huxley 1946) But he thought most of products of his ruminations lay hundreds of years into the future. Still, he took himself to task for missing a “reference to nuclear fission” and sought to justify his oversight by claiming the novel was about “the advancement of science as it affects human individuals,” so it was natural to focus on “biology, physiology and psychology.” (Huxley 1946) This may have seemed like pained reasoning in 1946, but in fact, the…