[ExI] Huxley or Orwell - who got it right?

[John Clark]

On Sat, Feb 4, 2017 at 5:04 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:


> ​> ​
> Brave New World is a book I found interesting, but not horrifying at all.
>
>
​I agree, it wouldn't be my ideal society but I can think of worse. As I
recall in Brave New World they even generously granted a request by one the
characters who didn't fit in because he had too much brainpower, I think it
was Helmholtz Watson, to go to a island and live out his life and do
whatever he wanted there.    ​



> ​> ​
> It wasn’t clear to me that it was dystopian, certainly not all of it.
>

Arthur C Clarke wrote a couple of novels that were supposed to depict
dystopian societies (Against The Fall Of Night and The City And the Stars)
in them everybody was happy, healthy, educated and rich. Oh and by the way
they were immortal too.  As a kid I figured there must be something wrong
with me because I didn't think that sounded so bad, and even now I feel it
beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. At the end of the books the
hero makes everything right and people are no longer happy or immortal
but it's supposed to be better for society.

  John K Clark
​
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20170205/d4491c6d/attachment.html>