Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

  

Today on Far Future Calling we are proud to present a BBC television movie adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World produced in 1980.

 

First edition cover of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

 

Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurology. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958) and with his final work, a novel titled Island (1962).

Brave New World Alphas and Betas

 

This 3-hour TV adaptation of the 1932 Aldous Huxley novel is set 600 years in the future. In this "well- ordered" society, the citizens are required to take mind-controlling drugs, sex without love is compulsory, and test-tube babies are commonplace because of a ban on pregnancy. Keir Dullea (of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame) heads the cast as Thomas Grahmbell, "director of hatcheries". 

Brave New World Epsilons

  

Not everybody is satisfied with society's lack of humanity and feeling; the loudest dissidents are free-thinking poet Heimholtz Watson (Dick Anthony Williams) and brilliant oddball Bernard Marx (Bud Cort). An injection of new "old" ideas are brought in by "primitive" John Savage (Kristoffer Tabori), who lives on an Indian reservation which still honours 20th century values. Meanwhile, Linda Lysenko (Julie Cobb) becomes a natural mother--and in so doing becomes a criminal. In keeping with the style of the original book, the script's newly-minted characters are given names of pop-culture icons (Disney, Maoina, Stalina, and so on). Brave New World was first telecast March 7, 1980.

Brave New World's title derives from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't.

 

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

BBC Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
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