>>13422834I wish he was closer to correct than seems to be panning out. Orwell was wrong too. The writer cannot escape a conception where they're the author of the world being created, therefore important, and each life limned into being somewhat important as well. Huxley has the reservations and all the subclasses and sex for pleasure and fun and media and all these human-focused activities. Orwell has a state that cares about his characters so much they devote resources to breaking them down and rebuilding them and tormenting them. We're not going to get that. We don't really know what's going to become of the population booms in the southern hemisphere and central Asia, but the future is mandatory itinerancy, and we now have generational data telling us what sort of lifestyle kills procreation. Everyone on these forums has seen the bestial Chinese videos where everyone looks at their shoes when they encounter suffering and just keep going about their business. It doesn't take a lot of threat to cow people. The threat of reprisal's more useful than actually coming down on, because like death, it's the unknown. If you see someone shot, you can get angry. If it becomes more difficult to buy groceries, and you're already stretched thin, you just grit your teeth and keep producing. No-one monitoring you for naughty thoughts. No-one in the back rooms of government waiting with a cage of rats. Machines monitoring machines. Huxley was ensnared by his inability to create a world that didn't require a creator. What we're stuck with now is imagining what the biggest cheapest asshole we've ever met would do to save himself a headache and spend as little as possible while making as much as possible, and we can get pretty close to the truth of it. I haven't read his other stuff. I've been working my way through Walker Percy when I can handle a book and not just stare at nothing. I'll see what else is in Huxley's back catalogue eventually.