Huxley, meanwhile, imagined a world of repression rather than oppression, a world where we're all too happy to be distracted from our subjugation. Orwell imagined a viciously totalitarian future, and even today, the mention of Big Brother is never far away as authoritarian governments come to the fore. Brave New World is about genetic engineering, but it's also about social conditioning, and over-medication, or the loss of intimacy, or possibly technology and surveillance, and also maybe socialism is bad?Īldous Huxley's scathing novel came before George Orwell's 1984 and presents a sort of flip side to Orwell's infamous dystopia.

Westworld is about robots in cowboy hats. It certainly adds a dash of cursing, a touch of violence, some Radiohead and a load of people getting their kit off. The new TV adaptation, available on NBC's streaming service Peacock, re-examines the story for a modern age. I wasn't prepared for how scathingly direct or unsettlingly dark it was, and still is today. When I first read Aldous Huxley's famous 1932 novel Brave New World, I expected something fusty and old-fashioned.

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