Huxley’s idea of “feely” interactive films anticipates reality TV, selfies, mass pornography and the internet voyeurism of our own time. A world where, day by day, big business encourages us to sacrifice our privacy and spy on friends and families through social media. Here real emotion and ideals are purged, concepts such as family, religion, empathy and honour are banned and “history is bunk”.ĭawn has always believed that an adaptation of Brave New World must speak powerfully to a 21st-century world in which we have become enslaved by a compulsion for easy pleasure without accountability and where a banal popular culture opiates the masses. A world where life is created in test tubes and children are conditioned to prioritise consumerism, sexual pleasure and unswerving dedication to a World State. It is a place in which artifice rules, whether in scents, flavourings or fabrics. This is a world where people think they are always happy, always get what they want, and never want what they can’t have. Our Brave New World eschews the futuristic landscapes, flying machines and technical wizardry that much of sci-fi is obsessed with, and focuses instead upon a human story set in a ruthless totalitarian regime. Genetic engineering, euthanasia, a national lottery and even corruption at the top of world sport are all a part of his nightmare future. He foresaw the ubiquitous prevalence of drugs, both legal and illegal, and how pharmaceuticals such as Ritalin would sedate growing numbers of children. He predicted, for instance, the ways in which technology, in the control of powerful elites, can control our decision-making with social media, pornography, the commercialisation of sex, advertising and reality TV.

Aldous Huxley envisaged a regime with genetically engineered test-tube babies in Brave New World.

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