And you can always count on having a fun day when you spend it with the people you love. Happy family with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you. Won't you say you love me too? The Audio Partners Publishing Corporation is pleased to present Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Read by Michael York This is complete and unabridged. chapter one a squat grey building of only thirty-four stories over the main entrance the words central london hatchery and conditioning centre and in a shield
The world state's motto, Community, Identity, Stability. The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north, cold for all the summer beyond the panes. for all the tropical heat of the room itself a harsh thin light glared through the windows hungrily seeking some draped lay figure some pallid shape of academic gooseflesh but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory wintriness responded to wintriness the overalls of the workers were white
their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber the light was frozen dead only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance lying along the polished tubes like butter streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables and this said the director opening the door is the fertilizing room Bent over their instruments, 300 fertilizers were plunged.
as the director of hatcheries and conditioning entered the room in the scarcely breathing silence the absent-minded soliloquizing hum or whistle of absorbed concentration A troupe of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled, straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege.
The DHC for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments. Just to give you a general idea, he would explain to them. for of course some sort of general idea they must have if they were to do their work intelligently though as little of one if they were to be good and happy members of society as possible for particulars as everyone knows
make for virtue and happiness. Generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers, but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
Tomorrow, he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menacing geniality, you'll be settling down to serious work. You won't have time for generalities. Meanwhile... Meanwhile... it was a privilege straight from the horse's mouth into the notebook the boys scribbled like mad tall and rather thin but upright the director advanced into the room
he had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth just covered when he was not talking by his full floridly curved lips old young thirty fifty fifty-five it was hard to say And anyhow, the question didn't arise. In this year of stability, AF 632, it didn't occur to you to ask it. I shall begin at the beginning.
said the dhc and the more zealous students recorded his intentions in their notebooks begin at the beginning these he waved his hand are the incubators and opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test tubes the week's supply of ova kept he explained at blood heat Whereas the male game eats, and here he opened another door, they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes.
Rams, wrapped in theramagine, beget no lands. Still leaning against the incubators, he gave them. While the pencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilising process spoke first, of course, of its surgical introduction. The operation undergone voluntarily for the good of society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months' salary.
Continued with some account of the technique for preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing. Passed on to a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity.
refer to the liquor in which the detached and ripened eggs were kept and leading his charges to the work tables actually showed them how this liquor was drawn off from the test tubes how it was let out drop by drop onto the specially warm slides of the microscopes, how the eggs which are contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous receptacle, how, and he now took them to watch the operation,
This receptacle was immersed in a warm bouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa.
at a minimum concentration of 100,000 per cubic centimetre, he insisted, and how, after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and its contents re-examined, how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilised, it was... again immersed and if necessary yet again how the fertilized over went back to the incubators where the alphas and betas remained until definitely bottled while the gammas deltas and epsilons were brought out again
after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokhanovsky's process. Bokhanovsky's process, repeated the director, and the students underlined the words in their little notebooks. One egg, one embryo, one adult. Normality. But a Bocconofsky-fied egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide.
from eight to ninety-six buds and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo and every embryo into a full-sized adult making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before progress essentially the dhc concluded Bokhanovskification consists of a series of arrests of development. We check the normal growth, and paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding. Responds by budding.
the pencils were busy he pointed on a very slowly moving band a rack full of test-tubes was entering a large metal box another rack full was emerging machinery faintly purred it took eight minutes for the tubes to go through he told them eight minutes of hard x-rays being about as much as an egg can stand a few died of the rest the least susceptible divided into two most put out four buds some eight all were returned to the incubators where the buds began to develop then after two days
were suddenly chilled chilled and checked two four eight the buds in their turn budded and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol consequently burgeoned again and having budded, bud out of bud out of bud, were thereafter, further arrest being generally fatal, left to develop in peace. by which time the original egg was in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos, a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins.
But not in piddling twos and threes, as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide, actually by dozens, by scores at a time. Scores! the director repeated, and flung out his arms, as though he were distributing largesse. Scores! But one of the students was fool enough to ask where the advantage lay. my good boy the director wheeled sharply round on him can't you see can't you see he raised a hand his expression was solemn
Bakunovsky's process is one of the major instruments of social stability. Major instruments of social stability. Standard men and women. in uniform batches, the whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single Bokhanovskified egg. ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines the voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm you really know where you are for the first time in history
He quoted the planetary motto, Community, Identity, Stability. Grand words. If we could Bokhanovskify indefinitely, the whole problem would be solved. Solved by standard gammas, unvarying deltas, uniform epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology. But alas, the director shook his head, we can't Bokhanovsky-fy indefinitely.
ninety-six seemed to be the limit seventy-two a good average from the same ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible That was the best, sadly a second best, that they could do. And even that was difficult. For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to reach maturity.
But our business is to stabilize the population at this moment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over a quarter of a century, what would be the use of that? Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnap's technique had immensely accelerated the process of ripening. They could make sure of at least 150 matured eggs within two years. Fertilise and Bokhanovskify.
In other words, multiply by 72, and you get an average of nearly 11,000 brothers and sisters in 150 batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age. And in exceptional cases, we can make one ovary yield us over 15,000 adult individuals. Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to be passing at the moment. Mr. Foster, he called. The ruddy young man approached. Can you tell us the record for a single ovary, Mr. Foster? 16,012 in this centre.
Mr. Foster replied without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blue eye, and took an evident pleasure in quoting figures. 16,012 in 189 batches of identicals. But of course they've done much better, he rattled on, in some of the tropical centres. Singapore has often produced over 16,500, and Mombasa has actually touched the centre.
but then they have unfair advantages you should see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary it's quite astonishing when you are used to working with european material still he added with a laugh But the light of combat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin was challenging. Still, we need to beat them if we can. I'm working on a wonderful Delta Minus ovary at this moment, only just eighteen months old.
over twelve thousand seven hundred children already either decanted or in embryo and still going strong we'll beat them yet that's the spirit i like cried the director and clapped mr foster on the shoulder Come along with us and give these boys the benefit of your expert knowledge. Mr. Foster smiled modestly. With pleasure. They went. In the bottling room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity.
flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to the proper size came shooting up in little lifts from the organ store in the sub-basement whizz and then click the lift hatches flew open The bottle-liner had only to reach out a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth down, and before the lined bottle had time to travel out of reach along the endless band, whiz, click, another flap of peritoneum had shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle. The next...
at that slow, interminable procession on the band. Next to the liners stood the matriculators. The procession advanced. One by one the eggs were transferred from their test tubes to the larger containers. Deftly the peritoneal lining was slit, the morula dropped into place, the saline solution poured in.
and already the bottle had passed and it was the turn of the labellers heredity date of fertilisation membership of bokanovsky group details were transferred from test tube to bottle No longer anonymous, but named, identified, the procession marched slowly on, on through an opening in the wall, slowly on, into the social predestination room.
Eighty-eight cubic metres of card index, said Mr Foster with relish as they entered. Containing all the relevant information, added the director. Brought up to date every morning. and coordinated every afternoon, on the basis of which they make their calculations. So many individuals of such and such quality, said Mr Foster, distributed in such and such quantities.
the optimum decanting rate at any given moment unforeseen wastages promptly made good promptly repeated mr foster if you knew the amount of overtime i had to put in after the last japanese earthquake He laughed good-humouredly and shook his head. The predestinators send in their figures to the fertilisers, who give them the embryos they ask for. and the bottles come in here to be predestinated in detail, after which they are sent down to the embryo store, where we now proceed ourselves.
and opening a door mr foster led the way down a staircase to the basement the temperature was still tropical they descended into a thickening twilight two doors and a passage with a double turn insured the cellar against any possible infiltration of the day embryos are like photographic film said mr foster waggishly as he pushed open the second door
They can only stand red light. And in effect, the sultry darkness into which the students now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on a summer's afternoon. the bulging flanks of row on receding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies and among the rubies moved the dim-red spectres of men and women with purple eyes and all the symptoms of lupus the hum and rattle of machinery faintly stirred the air
Give them a few figures, Mr. Foster, said the director, who was tired of talking. Mr. Foster was only too happy to give them a few figures. 220 meters long, 200 wide, 10 high. He pointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, the students lifted their eyes towards the distant ceiling. Three tiers of racks, ground floor level, first gallery, second gallery.
The spidery steelwork of gallery above gallery faded away in all directions into the dark. Near them, three red ghosts were busily unloading demidrons from a moving staircase. The Escalator from the Social Predestination Room. Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks. Each rack, though you couldn't see it, was a conveyor travelling at the rate of thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour. 267 days at 8 metres a day. 2,136 metres in all.
One circuit of the cellar at ground level, one on the first gallery, half on the second, and on the 267th morning, daylight in the decanting room. Independent existence, so-called. But in the interval, Mr. Foster concluded, we've managed to do a lot to them. Oh, a very great deal. His laugh was knowing and triumphant. That's the spirit I like, said the director once more.
Let's walk round. You tell them everything, Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster duly told them. Told them of the growing embryo on its bed of peritoneum. made them taste the rich blood surrogate in which it fed, explained why it had to be stimulated with placentin and thyroxin, told them of the corpus luteum extract. showed them the jets through which at every 12 metre from 0 to 2040 it was automatically injected.
spoke of those gradually increasing doses of pituitary administered during the final 96 metres of their course, described the artificial maternal circulation installed on every bottle at metre 112. Show them the reservoir of blood surrogate, the centrifugal pump that kept the liquid moving over the placenta and drove it through the synthetic lung and waste product filter.
referred to the embryo's troublesome tendency to anemia to the massive doses of hog stomach extract and fetal foals liver with which in consequence it had to be supplied show them the simple mechanism by means of which during the last two metres out of every eight all the embryos were simultaneously shaken into familiarity with movement
hinted at the gravity of the so-called trauma of decanting, and enumerated the precautions taken to minimise, by a suitable training of the bottled embryo, that dangerous shock. told them of the tests for sex carried out in the neighbourhood of metre 200, explained the system of labelling, a T for the males, a circle for the females, and for those who were destined to become Freemartins, a question mark.
black on a white ground for of course said mr foster in the vast majority of cases fertility is merely a nuisance one fertile ovary in twelve hundred that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes but we want to have a good choice And of course, one must always leave an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as 30% of the female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex hormones every 24 metres for the rest of the course.
Result, they decanted as freemartins, structurally quite normal. Except, he had to admit, that they do have just the slightest tendency to grow beards. But sterile, guaranteed sterile. Which brings us, at last, continued Mr. Foster, out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention. He rubbed his hands. For of course they didn't content themselves with merely hatching out embryos. Any cow could do that. We also predestine and condition.
We decant our babies as socialised human beings, as alphas or epsilons, as future sewage workers or future... He was going to say future world controllers. But correcting himself said... future directors of hatcheries, instead. The DHC acknowledged the compliment with a smile. They were passing metre 320 on rack 11.
A young beta minus mechanic was busy with screwdriver and spanner on the blood surrogate pump of a passing bottle. The hum of the electric motor deepened by fractions of a tone as he turned the nuts down. A final twist, a glance at the revolution counter, and he was done. He moved two paces down the line and began the same process on the next pump. Reducing the number of revolutions per minute.
mr foster explained the surrogate goes round slower therefore passes through the lung at longer intervals therefore gives the embryo less oxygen nothing like oxygen shortage for keeping an embryo below par And again he rubbed his hands. But why do you want to keep the embryo below par? asked an ingenuous student. Ass! said the director, breaking a long silence.
hasn't it occurred to you that an epsilon embryo must have an epsilon environment as well as an epsilon heredity it evidently hadn't occurred to him he was covered with confusion The lower the cast, said Mr. Foster, the shorter the oxygen. The first organ affected was the brain. After that, the skeleton. At 70% of normal oxygen, you got dwarfs. At less than 70... eyeless monsters who are no use at all concluded mr foster whereas his voice became confidential and eager
If they could discover a technique for shortening the period of maturation, what a triumph, what a benefaction to society. Consider the horse. They considered it. Mature at six. the elephant at ten while at thirteen a man is not yet sexually mature and is only full grown at twenty hence of course that fruit of delayed development the human intelligence But in Epsilons, said Mr. Foster very justly, we don't need human intelligence. Didn't need and didn't get it.
But though the epsilon mind was matured at ten, the epsilon body was not fit to work till eighteen. Long years of superfluous and wasted immaturity. if the physical development could be speeded up till it was as quick say as a cow's what an enormous saving to the community enormous murmured the students Mr Foster's enthusiasm was infectious. He became rather technical, spoke of the abnormal endocrine coordination which made men grow so slowly, postulated a germinal mutation to account for it.
Could the effects of this germinal mutation be undone? Could the individual epsilon embryo be made to revert, by a suitable technique, to the normality of dogs and cows? That was the problem. and it was all but solved. Pilkington at Mombasa had produced individuals who were sexually mature at four and full-grown at six and a half. A scientific triumph... but socially useless. Six-year-old men and women were too stupid to do even epsilon work, and the process was an all-or-nothing one.
Either you failed to modify at all, or else you modified the whole way. They were still trying to find the ideal compromise between adults of twenty and adults of six. So far, without success. mr foster sighed and shook his head their wanderings through the crimson twilight had brought them to the neighbourhood of metre one hundred and seventy on rack nine from this point onwards
Rack 9 was enclosed, and the bottles performed the remainder of their journey in a kind of tunnel, interrupted here and there by openings two or three metres wide. Heat conditioning, said Mr Foster. Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decanted, the embryos had a horror of cold.
they were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miners and acetate silk-spinners and steel-workers. Later on, their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. We conditioned them to thrive on heat.
concluded Mr. Foster. Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it. And that, put in the director sententiously, that is the secret of happiness and virtue, liking what you've... got to do all conditioning aims at that making people like their unescapable social destiny in a gap between two tunnels
A nurse was delicately probing with a long fine syringe into the gelatinous contents of a passing bottle. The students and their guides stood watching her for a few moments in silence. Well, Lenina!
said mr foster when at last she withdrew the syringe and straightened herself up the girl turned with a start one could see that for all the lupus and the purple eyes she was uncommonly pretty henry her smile flashed redly at him a row of coral teeth charming charming murmured the director and giving her two or three little pats
received in exchange a rather deferential smile for himself. "'What are you giving them?' asked Mr. Foster, making his tone very professional. "'Oh, the usual typhoid and sleeping sickness!' Tropical workers start being inoculated at metre 150, Mr Foster explained to the students. The embryos still have gills. We immunise the fish against the future man's diseases. Then, turning back to Lenina...
Ten to five on the roof this afternoon, he said, as usual. Charming, said the director once more, and with a final pat, moved away after the others. On Rack 10, rows of next generation's chemical workers were being trained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine. The first of a batch of 250 embryonic rocket plane engineers was just passing the 1100-metre mark on Rack 3. A special mechanism kept their containers in constant rotation to improve their sense of balance.
Mr. Foster explained. Doing repairs on the outside of a rocket in mid-air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the circulation when they're right way up. so that they're half-starved and double the flow of surrogate when they're upside down. They learn to associate topsy-turvidum with well-being. In fact, they're only truly happy when they're standing on their heads. And now, Mr. Foster went on,
I'd like to show you some very interesting conditioning for Alpha Plus intellectuals. We have a big batch of them on Rack 5, first gallery level, he called to two boys who had started to go down to the ground floor. They're around metre 900. he explained. You can't really do any useful intellectual conditioning till the fetuses have lost their tails. Follow me. But the director had looked at his watch. Ten to three, he said.
no time for the intellectual embryos i'm afraid we must go up to the nurseries before the children have finished their afternoon sleep mr foster was disappointed at least one glance at the decanting room he pleaded Very well, then, the director smiled indulgently. Just one glance. Chapter Two Mr. Foster was left in the decanting room. The DHC and his students stepped into the nearest lift and were carried up to the fifth floor. Infant nurseries. Neo-Pavlovian conditioning rooms.
announced the notice-board. The director opened a door. They were in a large, bare room, very bright and sunny, for the whole of the southern wall was a single window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscous linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor.
big bowls packed tight with blossom thousands of petals ripe blown and silkily smooth like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs but of cherubs in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as... death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble. The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in. Set out the books, he said curtly.
in silence the nurses obeyed his command between the rose bowls the books were duly set out a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish or bird now bring in the children they hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two each pushing a kind of tall dumb waiter laden on all its four wire-netted shelves with eight-month-old babies
All exactly alike. A Bukhanovsky group, it was evident. And all, since their cast was Delta, dressed in khaki. Put them down on the floor. The infants were unloaded. Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books. Turned, the babies at once fell silent. then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up.
as though with a sudden passion from within. A new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles, and twitterings of pleasure. The director rubbed his hands. Excellent, he said. It might almost have been done on purpose.
the swiftest crawlers were already at their goal small hands reached out uncertainly touched grasped unpeddling the transfigured roses crumpling the illuminated pages of the books The director waited until all were happily busy. Then, watch carefully, he said, and lifting his hand, he gave the signal.
The head nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever. There was a violent explosion. Shriller, and even shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded. The children started, screamed, their faces were distorted with terror. And now, the director shouted, for the noise was deafening, now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.
He waved his hand again, and the head nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. there was something desperate almost insane about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance their little bodies twitched and stiffened their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires We can electrify that whole strip of floor, bawled the director in explanation. But that's enough, he signalled to the nurse. The explosion ceased.
The bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs... broaden out once more into a normal howl of ordinary terror offer them the flowers and the books again the nurses obeyed but at the approach of the roses
At the mere sight of those gaily coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and bar-bar black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror. The volume of their howling suddenly increased. Observe, said the director triumphantly. Observe! Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks. already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly what man has joined
Nature is powerless to put asunder. They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an instinctive hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives. The director turned to his nurses. Take them away again.
still yelling the khaki babies were loaded onto their dumb waiters and wheeled out leaving behind them the smell of sour milk and a most welcome silence one of the students held up his hand and though he could see quite well why you couldn't have lower-caste people wasting the community's time over books and that there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably decondition one of their reflexes yet
Well, he couldn't understand about the flowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for deltas to like flowers? Patiently, the DHC explained. if the children were made to scream at the sight of a rose that was on grounds of high economic policy not so very long ago a century or thereabouts
Gammas, deltas, even epsilons had been conditioned to like flowers, flowers in particular, and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity. and so compel them to consume transport. And didn't they consume transport? asked the student. Quite a lot, the DHC replied, but nothing else.
primroses and landscapes he pointed out have one grave defect they are gratuitous a love of nature keeps no factories busy It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes, to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport.
For of course it was essential they should keep on going to the country, even though they hated it. The problem was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found. We condition the masses to hate the country, concluded the director, but simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports.
At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus, so that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks. I see, said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration. There was a silence, then, clearing his throat, once upon a time...
The director began. While our Ford was still on earth, there was a little boy called Rubin Rabinovich. Rubin was the child of Polish-speaking parents. The director interrupted himself. You know what... Polish is, I suppose. A dead language. Like French and German, added another student, officiously showing off his learning. And a parent? Questioned the DHC? There was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed.
they had not yet learned to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science one at last had the courage to raise a hand Human beings used to be... He hesitated. The blood rushed to his cheeks. Well, they used to be... Fiviparous. Quite right. the director nodded approvingly and when the babies were decanted born came the correction well then they were the parents i mean not the babies of course the other ones
The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion. In brief, the director summed up, the parents were the father and the mother. The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boy's eye-avoiding silence. "'Mother!' he repeated loudly, rubbing in the science, and, leaning back in his chair, These, he said gravely, are unpleasant facts, I know it, but then most historical facts are unpleasant.
He returned to little Reuben, to little Reuben, in whose room, one evening, by an oversight, his father and mother, crash, crash, happened to leave the radio turned on.
For you must remember that in those days of gross, viviparous reproduction, children were always brought up by their parents and not in state conditioning centres. While the child was asleep, a broadcast programme from london suddenly started to come through and the next morning to the astonishment of his crash and crash the more daring of the boys ventured to grin at one another
Little Reuben woke up repeating word for word a long lecture by that curious old writer. One of the very few whose works have been permitted to come down to us, George Bernard Shaw. who was speaking according to a well-authenticated tradition about his own genius to little rubens wink and snigger this lecture was of course perfectly incomprehensible and imagining that their child had suddenly gone mad, they sent for a doctor. He fortunately understood English.
recognised the discourse as that which Shaw had broadcasted the previous evening, realised the significance of what had happened, and sent a letter to the medical press about it. principle of sleep teaching, or hypnopedia, had been discovered. The DHC made an impressive pause. The principle had been discovered but many, many years were to elapse before that principle was usefully applied.
The case of little Reuben was only twenty-three years after our Ford's first tea model was put on the market. Here the director made a sign of the tea on his stomach, and all the students reverently followed suit. and yet furiously the student scribbled hypnopedia first used officially in a f two hundred and fourteen why not before two reasons eh
These early experimenters, the DHC was saying, were on the wrong track. They thought that hypnopedia could be made an instrument of intellectual education. A small boy asleep on his right side. The right arm stuck out, the right hand hanging limp over the edge of the bed. Through a round grating in the side of a box, a voice speaks softly.
the nile is the longest river in africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe although falling short of the length of the mississippi missouri the nile is at the head of all rivers as regards the length of its basin which extends through thirty-five degrees of latitude at breakfast the next morning
Tommy, someone says, do you know which is the longest river in Africa? A shaking of the head. But don't you remember something that begins, the Nile is... the nile is the longest river in africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe The words came rushing out, although falling short of, well now, which is the longest river in Africa? The eyes are blank. I don't know.
but the nile tommy the nile is the longest river in africa and second then which river is the longest tommy tommy bursts into tears. I don't know! he howls. That howl, the director made it plain, discouraged the earliest investigators. The experiments were abandoned.
No further attempt was made to teach children the length of an aisle in their sleep. Quite rightly, you can't learn a science unless you know what it's all about. Whereas... if they'd only started on moral education said the director leading the way towards the door the students followed him desperately scribbling as they walked and all the way up in the lift Moral education which ought never in any circumstances to be rational. Silence. Silence.
whispered a loudspeaker as they stepped out at the fourteenth floor and silence silence the trumpet mouths indefatigably repeated at intervals down every corridor The students, and even the director himself, rose automatically to the tips of their toes. They were alphas, of course, but even alphas have been well-conditioned. Silence! silence all the air of the fourteenth floor was sibilant with the categorical imperative fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door
which the director cautiously opened. They stepped over the threshold into the twilight of a shattered dormitory. Eighty cots stood in a row against the wall. there was a sound of light regular breathing and a continuous murmur as of very faint voices remotely whispering a nurse rose as they entered and came to attention before the director
What's the lesson this afternoon? he asked. We had elementary sex for the first forty minutes, she answered, but now it's switched over to elementary class consciousness.
the director walked slowly down the long line of cots rosy and relaxed with sleep eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing there was a whisper under every pillow the d h c halted and bending over one of the little beds listened attentively elementary class consciousness did you say let's have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet
at the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall the director walked up to it and pressed a switch all wear green said a soft but very distinct voice beginning in the middle of a sentence and delta children wear khaki oh no i don't want to play with delta children and epsilons are still worse they're too stupid to be able to read or write besides they wear black which is such a beastly colour
I'm so glad I'm a beta. There was a pause. Then the voice began again. Alpha children wear grey. they work much harder than we do because they're so frightfully clever i'm really awfully glad i'm a baiter because i don't work so hard and then we are much better than the gammas and deltas gammas are stupid they all wear green and delta children wear khaki oh no i don't want to play with delta children and epsilons are still worse they're too stupid to be able
The director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows. They'll have that repeated 40 or 50 times more before they wake, then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. 120 times, three times a week, for 30 months.
after which they go on to a more advanced lesson roses and electric shocks the khaki of deltas and a whiff of asafoetida wedded indissolubly before the child can speak but wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale cannot bring home the finer distinctions cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behaviour for that there must be words but words without reason in brief hypnopedia the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time
the students took it down in their little books straight from the horse's mouth once more the director touched the switch so frightfully clever the soft insinuating indefatigable voice was saying i'm really awfully glad i'm a baiter because not so much like drops of water the water it is true can wear holes in the hardest granite rather drops of liquid sealing-wax drops that adhere in crust incorporate themselves with what they fall on
till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob till at last the child's mind is these suggestions and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind And not the child's mind only, the adult's mind too, all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides, made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions! The director almost shouted in triumph. Suggestions from the state! He banged the nearest table.
It therefore follows... A noise made him turn round. Oh, Ford, he said in another tone, I've gone and woken the children. Chapter 3 Outside in the garden it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, Six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns or playing ball games or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs. The roses were in bloom.
two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime-trees the air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters The director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of centrifugal bumble puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome steel tower.
A ball, thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower, rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disc, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing. and had to be caught. Strange, mused the director as they turned away. strange to think that even in our ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting
Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games. He interrupted himself. That's a charming little group, he said.
pointing in a little grassy bay between tall clumps of mediterranean heather two children a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older were playing very gravely and with all the focused attention of scientists intent on a labour of discovery a rudimentary sexual game charming charming the dhc repeated sentimentally
charming the boys politely agreed but their smile was rather patronizing they had put aside similar childish amusements too recently to be able to watch them now without a touch of contempt charming but it was just a pair of kids fooling about that was all just kids i always think the director was continuing in the same rather maudlin tone when he was interrupted by a loud boo-hooing
From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leaving by the hand a small boy, who howled as he went. An anxious-looking little girl trotted at her heels. "'What's the matter?' asked the director. The nurse shrugged her shoulders. Nothing much, she answered. It's just that this little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play. I'd noticed it once or twice before, and now again today.
He started yelling just now. Honestly, put in the anxious-looking little girl, I didn't mean to hurt him or anything, honestly. Of course you didn't, dear, said the nurse reassuringly. And so, she went on, turning back to the director, I'm taking him to see the assistant superintendent of psychology, just to see if anything's at all abnormal. Quite right, said the director. Take him in.
You stay here, little girl, he added, as the nurse moved away with her still howling charge. What's your name? Polly Trotsky. And a very good name, too, said the director. run away now and see if you can find some other little boy to play with the child scampered off into the bushes and was lost to sight exquisite little creature said the director looking after her
Then turning to his students, what I'm going to tell you now, he said, may sound incredible. But then, when you are not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible. He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play among children had been regarded as abnormal. there was a roar of laughter and not only abnormal actually immoral no and had therefore been rigorously suppressed
A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves. They could not believe it. Even adolescents! the DHC was saying, even adolescents like yourselves. Not possible. Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality, Absolutely nothing. Nothing? In most cases, till they were over twenty years old. Twenty years old?
echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief. Twenty, the director repeated. I told you that you'd find it incredible. But what happened? they asked. What were the results? The results were terrible. A deep resonant voice broke startlingly into the dialogue. They looked round. On the fringe of the little group stood a stranger.
a man of middle height black-haired with a hooked nose full red lips eyes very piercing and dark terrible he repeated The DHC had at that moment sat down on one of the steel and rubber benches conveniently scattered through the gardens, but at the sight of the stranger he sprang to his feet and darted forward, his hand outstretched, smiling with all his teeth.
Effusive. Controller! What an unexpected pleasure! Boys, what are you thinking of? This is the Controller. This is his forgeship. Mustapha Mond. In the four thousand rooms of the centre, the four thousand electric clocks simultaneously struck four. Discarnate voices called from the trumpet mouths. Main day shift off duty.
Second day shift take over. Main day shift off. In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, Henry Foster and the assistant director of predestination rather pointedly turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau, averted themselves from that unsavoury reputation. The faint hum and rattle of machinery still stirred the crimson air in the embryo store.
shifts might come and go one lupus-coloured face give place to another majestically and for ever the conveyors crept forward with their load of future men and women lenin a crown walked briskly towards the door His fordship, Mustapha Mond. The eyes of the saluting students almost popped out of their heads. Mustapha Mond. The resident controller for Western Europe. One of the...
Ten world controllers. One of the ten. And he sat down on the bench with the DHC. He was going to stay. To stay, yes, and actually... Talk to them, straight from the horse's mouth, straight from the mouth of Ford himself. Two shrimp-brown children emerged from a neighbouring shrubbery, stared at them for a moment with large astonished eyes, then returned to their amusements among the leaves. You all remember.
"'said the Controller in his strong, deep voice. "'You all remember, I suppose, "'that beautiful and inspired saying of our Fords, "'History is bunk. "'History,' he repeated slowly, is bunk he waved his hand and it was as though with an invisible feather whisk he had brushed away a little dust and the dust was harappa was ur of the chaldees some spiderwebs and they were thebes and babylon and canossus and mycenae whisk whisk and where was odysseus where was job where was jupiter and gotama and
and those specks of antique dirt called athens and rome jerusalem and the middle kingdom all were gone The place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk. The cathedrals. Whisk, whisk. King Lear and the thoughts of Pascal. Whisk. Passion. Whisk. Requiem. Whisk. Symphony. Whisk. going to the feelies this evening henry inquired the assistant predestinator i hear the new one of the alhambra is first-rate
There's a love scene on a bearskin rug. They say it's marvellous. Every hair the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactile effects. That's why you're taught no history. the controller was saying. But now the time has come. The DHC looked at him nervously. There were those strange rumours of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the controller's study. Bibles.
Poetry. Ford knew what. Mustafa Mond intercepted his anxious glance, and the corners of his red lips twitched ironically. It's all right, director. he said in a tone of faint derision, I won't corrupt them. The DHC was overwhelmed with confusion. Those who feel themselves despised... do well to look despising. The smile on Bernard Marx's face was contemptuous. Every hair on the bear indeed. I shall make a point of going, said Henry Foster.
mustapha mond leaned forward shook a finger at them just try to realize it he said and his voice sent a strange thrill quivering along their diaphragms try to realise what it was like to have a viviparous mother. That smutty word again, but none of them dreamed this time of smiling. Try to imagine what living with one's family meant. They tried, but obviously without the smallest success. And do you know what a home was?
They shook their heads. From her dim crimson cellar, Lennon a crown shot up seventeen stories. turned to the right as she stepped out of the lift walked down a long corridor and opening the door marked girls dressing room plunged into a deafening chaos of arms and bosoms and underclothing Torrents of hot water were splashing into or gurgling out over a hundred baths.
rumbling and hissing eighty vibro-vacuum massage machines were simultaneously kneading and sucking the firm and sunburnt flesh of eighty superb female specimens Everyone was talking at the top of her voice. A synthetic music machine was warbling out a super cornet solo. Hello, Fanny, said Lenina to the young woman who had the pegs and locker next to hers.
Fanny worked in the bottling room, and her surname was also Crown. But as the two thousand million inhabitants of the planet had only ten thousand names between them, the coincidence was not particularly surprising.
lenina pulled at her zippers downward on the jacket downwards with a double-handed gesture at the two that held trousers downwards again to loosen her undergarment still wearing her shoes and stockings she walked off towards the bathrooms home home a few small rooms stiflingly over-inhabited by a man by a periodically teeming woman by a rabble of boys and girls of all ages no air no space An under-sterilised prison, darkness, disease and smells.
the controller's evocation was so vivid that one of the boys more sensitive than the rest turned pale at the mere description and was on the point of being sick then anna got out of the bath toweled herself dry took hold of a long flexible tube plugged into the wall presented the nozzle to her breast as though she meant to commit suicide pressed down the trigger
a blast of warmed air dusted her with the finest talcum powder eight different scents and eau de cologne were laid on in little taps over the wash-basin she turned on the third from the left dabbed herself with and carrying her shoes and stockings in her hand went out to see if one of the vibro-vacuum machines were free and home was as squalid psychically as physically Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion.
what suffocating intimacies what dangerous insane obscene relationships between the members of the family group maniacally the mother brooded over her children her children
brooded over them like a cat over its kittens. But a cat that could talk, a cat that could say— my baby my baby over and over again my baby and oh oh at my breast the little hands the hunger and that unspeakable agonising pleasure till at last my baby sleeps my baby sleeps with a bubble of white milk at the corner of his mouth my little baby sleeps yes said mustapha mond nodding his head
You may well shudder. Who are you going out with tonight? Lenin asked, returning from the vibrovac like a pearl illuminated from within, pinkly glowing. Nobody. lenina raised her eyebrows in astonishment i've been feeling rather out of sorts lately fanny explained dr wells advised me to have a pregnancy substitute but my dear you're only nineteen The first pregnancy substitute isn't compulsory till 21. I know, dear, but some people are better if they begin earlier.
Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with wide pelvises like me ought to have their first pregnancy substitute at 17. So I'm really two years late, not two years early.
she opened the door of her locker and pointed to the row of boxes and labelled files on the upper shelf syrup of corpus luteum lenina read the names aloud over in guaranteed fresh not to be used after august the first a f six hundred thirty two mammary gland extract to be taken three times daily before meals with a little water placentin 5cc to be injected intravenally every third day. Oh! Lenina shouted. How I loathe intravenals, don't you? Yes, but when they do one good...
Fanny was a particularly sensible girl. End of Disc 1