Brave New World

Brave New World was written by Aldous Huxley in 1932, and like George Orwell's 1984, is one of the most important books in Science-Fiction.  The future depicted in Huxley's dystopia is, unlike Orwell's pain-filled vision, a pleasure-filled civilization that is engineered from (test tube conditioned) cradle to (mandatory death at 60) grave.  There are 5 levels in the social heirarchy, each conditioned to believe itself superior to the others. There is plenty of sex (pnumatic girls) and drugs (soma) for all, but no parents, morals, religion, art, individuality, responsibility, or free-will:

"It's an absurdity.  An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work--go mad, or start smashing things up.  Alphas can be completely socialized--but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work.  Only an Epsilon can be expected to make epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren't sacrifices; they're the line of least resistance.  His conditioning has laid down rails along which he's got to run.  He can't help himself; he's foredoomed.  Even after decanting, he's still inside a bottle--an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations.  Each one of us, of course," the Controller meditatively continued, "goes through life inside a bottle.  But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous.  We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space.  You cannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles." 

Brave New World isn't just a dire cautionary tale about the perils of technology; alternately grim and humorous, it's a delight to read.  The importance of this book is considerable, and even President George Bush mentioned Brave New World when discussing his hope and health crushing attitudes towards stem-cell research...