A lot of key SF books in the cannon are dystopias 1984, We , Brave New World, Gulliver's travels could possibly be considered SF as well.
(Properly speaking, it's only truly dystopic for 13% of the population who are self-censoring Outer Party members https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975900 . Proles are free. The Inner Party is meritocratic. Presumably the Outer Party members are those who are both too snobbish to be proles yet insufficiently apt to join the Inner Party, so it is no wonder they —as some do in our present— make up for lack of ability via surplus of ideology. Someday I should try to write a short story in which the recently-promoted Syme is telling his new colleagues amusing anecdotes about this fellow Smith he used to work with: not a bad chap at heart, but frightfully prone to paranoid[1] conspiracy theories.)
As for Brave New World, it's a (utilitarian) utopia, just one that doesn't have any room for English Literature teachers, so of course they'd be against it, wouldn't they?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24098309
We does seem truly dystopic, a precursor of the Paranoia RPG. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film) . I don't think it directly influenced Brave New World, however, because BNW can be constructed simply by taking the pillars of the pre-WWI world (church, family, wealth, etc.) and imagining a world where either things are reversed (e.g. doing one's duty doesn't mean putting off the pleasant to do the unpleasant. Doing one's duty is consuming pleasantries.) or, even more heretically, completely irrelevant (families, nuclear or otherwise. No need to straighten out who inherits what when money doesn't seem to be an issue.).
Where BNW does agree with pre-WWI mores is in its class system, which is just handled more efficiently, if no less obviously, in the After-Ford future because people colour- rather than costume-code themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222905 (or, if costume doesn't suffice, refer to postal code.)
For clear evidence of technical progress between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries, we can compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine with GPT-3.
[1] Blair/Orwell > "I have said that at St Cyprian's we were not allowed to keep our own money. However, it was possible to hold back a shilling or two, and sometimes I used furtively to buy sweets which I kept hidden in the loose ivy on the playing-field wall. One day when I had been sent on an errand I went into a sweet-shop a mile or more from the school and bought some chocolates. As I came out of the shop I saw on the opposite pavement a small sharp-faced man who seemed to be staring very hard at my school cap. Instantly a horrible fear went through me. There could be no doubt as to who the man was. He was a spy placed there by Sambo! I turned away unconcernedly, and then, as though my legs were doing it of their own accord, broke into a clumsy run. But when I got round the next corner I forced myself to walk again, for to run was a sign of guilt, and obviously there would be other spies posted here and there about the town. All that day and the next I waited for the summons to the study, and was surprised when it did not come. It did not seem to me strange that the headmaster of a private school should dispose of an army of informers, and I did not even imagine that would have to pay them. I assumed that any adult, inside the school or outside, would collaborate voluntarily in preventing us from breaking the rules. Sambo was all-powerful; it was natural that his agent should be everywhere. When this episode happened I do not think I can have been less than twelve years old."
- truth: is what the rulers make of it
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... et seq
and certainly would be undermined by the arts, necessitating heavy censorship
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
- beauty: does this occur in 1984? It's not in Goldstein at all, so I have nothing to parallel. In the meantime, Jowett's translation of Book V:
> "Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of beauty, any more than the enthusiastic old men who in spite of wrinkles and ugliness continue to frequent the gymnasia. Yes, indeed, he said: according to present notions the proposal would be thought ridiculous. But then, I said, as we have determined to speak our minds, we must not fear the jests of the wits which will be directed against this sort of innovation; how they will talk of women's attainments both in music and gymnastic, and above all about their wearing armour and riding upon horseback!"
makes me wonder if he'd had any exposure to Scyths, etc.?
e.g. https://d30womf5coomej.cloudfront.net/c/d4/0cb93d1b-dc27-43d... (from https://tapas.io/episode/1577942 )
and compare http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~wald/lit/heroine_barbarian.htm...
(incidentally, "Who needs to wait for daylight? I just work by _sensus tactilis_." is a classical reference, but I recall neither poem nor author at the moment.)
1984 is a dystopian novel which, if anything, is a dumbed down version of a Kafka novel. It has nothing to do with Plato’s philosophy.
They have about as much in common with each other as an orange does with Jupiter: both are round. This is basic common sense to anyone with knowledge of either.
Otherwise, asserting "common sense" without specific evidence is neither instructive nor amusing (other than being reminiscent of Plato's neologism, the doxophile):
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
(the english has been inverted from the greek, φιλόδοξος. Compare french philodoxe.)
Well by that logic Hell is a utopia for demons. I mean yes, all dystopia have someone that enjoys being there, otherwise you would not get a society.
This also applies to The Republic, where normally we'd expect at least the people on top of a social order to enjoy being there, even if no one else does, but Plato's arguments give rise to some scepticism among the auditors: (tr. Jowett)
> "Here Adeimantus interposed a question: How would you answer, Socrates, said he, if a person were to say that you are making these people miserable, and that they are the cause of their own unhappiness; the city in fact belongs to them, but they are none the better for it; whereas other men acquire lands, and build large and handsome houses, and have everything handsome about them, offering sacrifices to the gods on their own account, and practising hospitality; moreover, as you were saying just now, they have gold and silver, and all that is usual among the favourites of fortune; but our poor citizens are no better than mercenaries who are quartered in the city and are always mounting guard?"
[1] whose hell? https://old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/3bcujr/a_russian_and...
WRT to BNW, see also Dante's first circle.
So you're saying that if Demons outnumbered humans billion to one, Hell would be a utopia.
Also from my recollection it wasn't just one. Several characters were deeply unhappy about their status. There is no reason to believe these characters are outliers, there could be others.
Although to be honest, most Brave New World people don't qualify as humans. They don't mourn their losses, create anything or believe in anything. They just consume. Most of them don't even procreate, since they are sterile.
Following the links given above, we have what happens to the other characters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23513002
I agree reasonable people may differ, but I'll still churlishly maintain the Savage (born viviparously) is the only one who's deeply unhappy. Marx (is it true what They say about the alcohol[3] in his bottle?) is annoyed, but he's happy enough when he can take advantage of the Savage, showing that he doesn't mind the System as long as he's comfortably near the top of his caste. Helmholtz is merely yearning to create literature, but since he doesn't know what that is, he doesn't realise what he hasn't done.) There is every reason to believe these characters are outliers, because it's explained that Alphas can't have as much conditioning[3,5] as the other castes, because they can handle creative jobs. Mond was unsatisfied, and got kicked upstairs. On the other hand, we have Fanny, and the Director[4], the members of Marx' Community Sing, and the entire supporting background cast. As Mond explicitly states the islands are society's escape valve for those who grow too individual, it seems unlikely there are many in the pre-island phase at any given time.
The people in BNW count as humans to me: they are, in Marcus Aurelius' words, "meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly" which makes them more human than, say, Spock (-0=0 and Mirror Spock = Spock). As to the specific charges:
- mourn losses: what losses are there to mourn? BNW is set centuries after a post-economic singularity, for Ford's sake. "People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get." And a gramme is better than a damn, anyway :-)
There is at least one major religion that believes being hungry occasionally is a necessary part of being human. Would the people of the BNW consider mourning like other religions consider hunger?
- create anything: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108488
What about feelies, flivvers, etc. etc.? Helmholtz himself works as a creative.[5]
- freemartins: (this is a technical agricultural[6] term) are 35% of the population, so they are many but not most.
Yes, that was pedantic. Many fewer than the non-reproductive population of other domesticated large animal species, to be certain. In any case, if one is not viviparous, then being a freemartin would seem to be superior, as one could always visit a feely or play another round of electromagnetic golf while the non-freemartins have to do their Malthusian Drill[7].
[1] I have not read this one yet, but a spoiler from the WP page is that said utopia doesn't exactly survive contact with the mundane world. Apocalypse Now reversed?
[2] If there's anyone on HN who doesn't have enough sense not to start a vegan restaurant, consider naming it "Those Who Walk Away From Omelettes", please.
[3] Up until recently in ireland, pregnant women were prescribed Guinness "for the iron." An irish friend says when she was young there were still a few unfortunates whose mothers must have been drinking more than a pint.
[3,5] "Eton is reserved exclusively for upper-caste boys and girls. One egg, one adult. It makes education more difficult of course. But as they'll be called upon to take responsibilities and deal with unexpected emergencies, it can't be helped." (I note that Eton has yet to, as in the BNW, have a Head Mistress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Head_Masters_of_Eton_C... )
Something that may help to explain Huxley's choice of hypnopaedic suggestions: british children (as Gods of the Copybook Headings suggests) used to copy "educational" snippets over and over. These days we use advertising more than education to inculcate and reinforce class distinctions, but the effects are similar. Because Orwell attended a second-rate boarding school, which "taught to the test", they never read classical authors in the whole, but were simply given received opinions and studied only a few key (carefully chosen so as not to disturb morals!) passages.
The inclusion of both Eton and The Delta Mirror suggest to me that Huxley had just as much to say about his own time as he does about the future. Presumably the lack of sexual hangups means education of the leadership caste in the BNW has fewer peccadillos than our own time (although it may well be a penetrating example of the values learned from a thorough reading of the classics, cooked swine can't consent!).
[4] Euthanasia via soma overdose is quietly implicit in a few passages. I suspect the Director may wind up there.
[5] If Brave New World is one example of what one gets when writers find they must often, in order to earn a biscuit, write copy instead of, on their own dime, art, then The Space Merchants is another.
[6] Dairy farmers are not fond of freemartins, because they need sons and daughters to produce veal and milk. Post Bokanovsky, that is perhaps not an issue — but we aren't treated, IIRC, to any information about the cuisine of the BNW.
People here used to judge bulls by how they looked. The US taught us instead to rate them by how many litres of milk per input their daughters produce. Moneyball, only the balls are Rocky Mountain Oysters.
[7] Huxley was only a few decades early on this front? "Schatzbutz Mausiherz ich lieb dich das ist kein Scherz / Fummel fummel kille kille, du nimmst eh die Pille..."
Are you a demon? If you go to hell and you see hundreds delighting in your pain, would you say to yourself, yes I may be tortured for eternity, but my pain definitely makes someone happy. Or would you be pissed so many are enjoying your pain.
> People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get.
Heimholtz. Also they make people like that, they kill their ambition through breeding and mental control. And even then, it's not perfect.
> what losses are there to mourn
All these systems assume things don't change. Things always change. Either through evolution or changes on a cosmic scale.
Imagine for a second, meteor hits the main soma production center. Hundreds killed, thousands left without their drug.
Or a rogue solar flare, fries any and all machines. What then?
Or, by freak of nature soma allergic or soma immune individual appeared. Unless humans have God-like insight, do they know that one version of protein won't cause another protein to fit neatly into a Soma looking hole.
There are always things to mourn, the novel doesn't show them correctly.
> > they never want what they can't get.
> Also they make people like that, they kill their ambition through breeding and mental control.
I admit they're more advanced than we have been, but how different is "I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard." from camels and needle eyes?
It may be more efficient for alphas to wear grey and deltas to wear khaki, but we can still trivially recognise the difference between the likely ambitions of the people depicted in
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/02/78/71/0278718a44733e6a05c5...
and
https://scontent.fqls1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/88175441_110...
thanks to thousands of repetitions[1] of our lessons in childhood...
The US may be finer-grained than the BNW: instead of having only 5 castes α β γ etc. they use nine-digit post codes to indicate their socioeconomic status. (then again, there was "on Wednesdays we wear pink.")
Mond: "Degrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working, goods-consuming citizen he's perfect. Of course, if you choose some other standard than ours, then perhaps you might say he was degraded. But you've got to stick to one set of postulates. You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy."
[1] I was once reading a description of big community feasts in pakistan, in which it was described that the local landlords don't dress any differently from their tenants, but visiting elite do dress fancy, to gain admission to the VIP tent. It sounded very similar to the dress code of a Midland TX BBQ.
"I'm glad I'm a Beta", sung in yank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLyqUuXrXkw