Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 21:53:20 -0500 (EST)
From: "Bryan A. Alexander" <bnalexan-AT-umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Scary novels/future


And so:


Bryan Alexander					Department of English
email: bnalexan-AT-umich.edu			University of Michigan
phone: (313) 764-0418				Ann Arbor, MI  USA    48103
fax: (313) 763-3128				http://www.umich.edu/~bnalexan

On Sun, 3 Mar 1996, J Laari wrote:

> OK Bryan and Ralph,
> 
> think I got your points. I would add something (though that might be 
> very boring). So here's more to Huxley vs. Orwell (and I'd like note that 
> it's a long time I've read those novels; if I'd had to read them now, my 
> opinion could be different): 
> 
> Bryan said that "Brave new world" is little too topical, too focused on 
> local tendencies, and that 1984 instead is more universal. 
> 
> Funny, I've got them exactly in opposite way... (Unfortunately I don't 
> remember Zamjatin anymore - time to consult bookshell.)

As far as sf goes, you're right.  But go back to friend Evgeny: WE is the 
best universal dystopia our century has produced.
 >... 
> I had in mind this basic distinction: 
> 
> 'Orwellian totalitarianism' is grey, dark, nearly lifeless. Very much the 
> same as former USSR by western description. Violent state apparatuses are 
> ready to enter your life when you transgress the borders of that which is 
> proper. Something that really disturbs all us individualists...
> 
> Huxley's world don't have to be like that because of all that (bio-) 
> technical manipulation. People have nearly moral obligation to 'enjoy'. 
> All entertainment and amusement keeps them 'happy'. Control is total 
> when you don't need any control (though that wasn't the case with Brave 
> new world?). 
> 

Good distinction.  Do you know Adorno's fine essay on BRAVE NEW WORLD?  
It's in PRISMS.  
> Taken as science fiction novels: I would still say that Huxley's peace is 
> more 'universal' than Orwell's. Latter is more attached to the period of 
> stalinism (and in this sense becomes more and more outdated); former 
> instead offers a view that is more and more probable as the years pass? 

I'd be interested to know what other political sf novels you're thinking 
about.  Have you read the anarchist classics, THE DISPOSSESSED (LeGuin) 
or DHALGREN (Delany)? or any early Soviet sf, like Bogdanov's short novels?

> 
> > Orwell was a serious anti-fascist and not an aristocratic mystical
> > philistine like Huxley.  Huxley presupposes the affluent society
> > and a rather disinterested approach to social domination. 

The latter is part of Adorno's argument.  And Orwell was indeed a serious 
antifascist, comments on this list and elsewhere to the contrary.


     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------