What Huxley thought of Orwell’s Dystopian Vision

Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World wrote a fan letter to George Orwell after reading a copy of 1984. While he enjoyed, if that’s the right word for these two extreme pessimists, Orwell’s vision of the collapse of society, he didn’t think it was quite bleak enough.


Image Credit: Letters of Note

These guys aren’t the type to invite along to a dinner party.

“Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. “

I’m thankful that God is sovereign, not these guys.