Ten years his senior, Zamyatin was born in Tambov Governorate, some 200 miles south of Moscow. If Huxley initially planned to satirize Wellsian Utopian tropes, then the question becomes: Where did he draw inspiration from for his dystopian ideas?Īside from Dostoevsky, the one writer that may have influenced his dystopian ideas was Yevgeny Zamyatin. But when I addressed myself to the problem of creating a negative Nowhere, a Utopia in reverse, I found the subject so fascinatingly pregnant with so many kinds of literary and psychological possibilities that I forgot Men Like Gods and addressed myself in all seriousness to the task of writing the book that was later to be known as Brave New World.” Regardless of Huxley’s motivation, Wells took offense and his aversion towards Huxley lasted more than ten years. So much so that, before I finished the book, I had resolved to write a derisive parody of this most optimistic of Wells’ Utopias. According to Huxley, “The reading of Men Like Gods evoked in me an almost pathological reaction in the direction of cynical anti-idealism. The truth, however, was slightly more nuanced. Wells was partly correct that Huxley wrote Brave New World as a derisive parody of Men Like Gods. It is sufficient to discover these laws of nature and man will cease to be responsible for his deeds, and will lead his life with ease.” The idea that the laws of nature could be discovered and used to control and manipulate human beings would become the theme of Huxley’s Brave New World. I n Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky’s Underground Man declares: “Knowledge alone will teach us (…), that man, in fact, does not have and never had neither will, nor wants, but is, in fact, something like a piano key, or an organ pin that there are laws of nature beyond the world and everything that man does is not happening in accordance with his will, but just happens, in accordance with the laws of nature. In the letters Huxley wrote during the early 1930s, he stated explicitly that his aim was to expose the “horror of the Wellsian Utopia” Beyond the influence of his contemporaries, Huxley’s doubts about the benefits of science and technology came from Dostoevsky. Huxley, of course, both understood and rejected Wells’ idealized embrace of a future where scientific knowledge is a guiding principle. Wells felt offended and accused Huxley of misunderstanding his utopian vision. Neither Huxley nor Orwell could have anticipated the digital age.įor his part, Wells believed that Brave New World was intended as a satiric response to his book, Men Like Gods. Wells, he never cared for the man, labeling him as a “vulgar little man.” Part of Huxley’s disdain was due to Wells’ anti-semitism. Although Huxley was heavily influenced by the adventure and utopian writer, H. Haldane who contributed original work to the areas of physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics his great uncle and poet, Matthew Arnold Albert Einstein with his general theory of relativity and several other notable writers of the time. They include the philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell J.B.S. Beyond the literary and scientific influence of his family, Huxley’s ideas in Brave New World were discussed and debated by the leading scientists and intellectuals of the day, many of whom were either friends, acquaintances, or family. That is to say, the dystopian theme of the novel has far more relevance to the digital age than it had in Huxley’s time. The predictive power of Brave New World is both extraordinary and improbable. His fifth novel, Brave New World, would become his greatest work. His early books include Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves, and Point Counter Point. Huxley established himself early in his career as a successful writer and satirist. Before I explore the relevance of Huxley’s work to our dystopian present, it is important to explore his influences. Neither Huxley nor Orwell could have anticipated the digital age. As I will argue later in this installment, both Huxley’s and Orwell’s dystopian visions have been realized, but not by means of coercive state control or narco-hypnotic conditioning.
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