BRAVE NEW WORLD is one of the most important novels of the 20th century.
Finally, a Fine Letterpress edition of Brave New World! Coming soon from ARETE EDITIONS.
‘Man is now the victim of his own technology’ – Aldous Huxley.
‘It’s possible to argue that Huxley got more right than his fellow dystopian, George Orwell. That was definitely the opinion of the great SF writer JG Ballard. Ballard said: “Huxley’s greatest novel, Brave New World , is a far shrewder guess at the likely shape of a future tyranny than Orwell’s vision of Stalinist terror in Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
The crucial point for Ballard was that Huxley described a world in which humanity welcomed its enslavement. In Nineteen-Eighty-Four, Big Brother is an oppressor, stamping a boot forever on a human face. In Brave New World, thanks to mood-altering drugs, the distractions of mass media technology, and ready access to sexual gratification, most people don’t even realise that they have no freedom. In this society, discontent is quelled by advertising, medication, sex and entertainment. Which really does sound quite familiar. So familiar (Huxley also describes such modern-seeming phenomena as test-tube babies and Virtual Reality cinema) that it’s hard to believe Brave New World was written in the early 1930s’ (BBC Dangerous visions).
Brave New World is an astonishingly prescient novel, foretelling advances in each of these areas that were as much as a half-century away.
Set in London in 2540, the 7th century After Ford, Brave New World presents a future in which genetically engineered babies are produced on assembly lines, the social and economic divide between the haves and the have nots is legally enforced and discontent is quelled by advertising, medication, sex and entertainment.
The novel proved to be a massive critical and commercial success, cementing Huxley’s place as one of the most important writers of the era. And it is also acknowledged to be one of the most important novels of the last 100 years.
We have, for the last two and a half years, been working with one of the pioneers of the ‘Pop Art’ movement of the ‘60’s; Allen Jones. Known for his brightly coloured paintings, prints and, sometimes infamous, sculptures, he is one of the last living artists from that time. Allen has produced over 20 colour prints and many black and white images for Arete’s Brave New World. Concentrating on the human relationships and the characters in his own unique voice, Allen Jones has managed to find a vision of the book not explored before.
We feel he has created an extraordinary book. Rich Tong, a long admirer of Allen’s paintings since his art school days, has been thrilled to work with the artist for the last year creating a book which is also a piece of art!
