Brave New World

Summary:In the year 632 After Ford, according to the new time-reckoning, the Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre explained the working of his factory to a group of first-year students. What they saw was a process in making human beings. Eggs were painlessly taken from the female body and fertilized in bottles. The bottles contained special nutritive solutions for each of the social classes, from Alpha plus to Epsilon minus, for which the future men and women were intended. Thanks to a brilliant invention by Bokanovsky it was possible to make each egg produce as many as 96 human beings, all exactly identical and therefore particularly suited for the performance of standardised tasks in society. Mass production, originally developed by the great Ford, ensured the material welfare of everybody; mental and spiritual troubles were effectively relieved by soma, a drug that makes you feels as if you were on a holiday. Individuality was banished; the slogan of the new society was Community, Identity, Stability. After “birth” (or decantation, as it was called) the babies were further conditioned for their predestined places in the community. The undergrads were deeply impressed by the Director’s inspired account as well as by the smooth efficiency of the machines and the trained workers in the factory. Their respect became even greater when Mustapha Mond, one of the ten World Controllers, joined them and lectured on the disgusting features of old-fashioned family life before modern scientific planning stepped in. They felt embarrassed at hearing him boldly use the obscene words father and mother. He told them to bear in mind that now sexual contact was a social obligation, for everyone belonged to everyone else. One of the After-Ford people who did not feel quite happy was Bernard Marx, whose was a bit like a Pre-Ford man owing to a mistake having been made during his period of incubation in the bottle. Too much alcohol had