Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

     When I chose this book, I had no idea what it was about other that it was a dystopian-style book. I really only chose it because the title sounded interesting. As I listened to the first half hour of the audiobook, the first few pages didn't strike me as very out of the ordinary, besides the occasional reference to a "World State" and "Society". The first few pages seemed to me, to be describing a fish hatchery. They described scientific processes and machines that didn't seem too different from the hatchery technology I have seen before at places along the Santiam and Deschutes rivers. 

    The real turn came when Dr. Foster began to talk about "babies." From that point forward I was like, "Hold up...did I read that right? So they're cloning people like livestock in there?" None of what I was reading and listening to seemed normal after that. Every statistic and fact the doctor and director gave just made me sink further into my discomfort. 15,000 to 16,000 babies made from one reproductive system? That just doesn't seem right to me. No way would this be allowed in our world surely? But then I remembered that this isn't our world,  or is it?

    While I had just finished Chapter 1, I already have a sense about the kind of world this book is set in. The world in which babies are literally created like cars on an assembly line, makes little, sometimes blatant attempts to be disturbingly close in accuracy to our own. This is seen with the repeated place names like London. Since Huxley published this piece to readers in 1932, it makes a little more sense to see this world as "alien" if I was reading this in 1932. I find the comparisons in technology a little more concerning, since I am reading this in 2021. There isn't much in the way of excitement in the first chapter. It rather feels like an opening credits scene, laying the foundations for a disturbing reality.