Brave New World: A Modern Context David Rowlands & Robbie Cottom

Soma vs. Modern Drugs Huxley was a known advocator of recreational drug use and some of his visions in Brave New World have seemingly become a part of reality. “A sensation of warmth radiated thrillingly out from the solar plexus to every extremity of the bodies of those who listened”

Anti-Depressants In the 1930s the idea of curing mental illnesses with medication would have been very shocking but this also became a reality. “I don’t understand anything, least of all why you don’t take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You’d forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you’d be jolly. So jolly.”

Cloning and Genetics Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments, cells or organisms. “One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified 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.”

Cloning and Genetics (2) In 1995 Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell of the Roslin Institute in Scotland successfully cloned two sheep, Megan and Morag, using cells extracted from differentiated embryos. However the major breakthrough in cloning came in 1996. Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell cloned the first animal from adult cells. Dolly the sheep, born on July 5, 1996, was created using the so-called Roslin Technique.

Contraception Contraception is heavily relied upon in Brave New World. In the 1930s latex condoms had just come into mass production. Lenina has a ‘Malthusian belt’ which is constantly stocked up with various contraceptives. In the 2012 London Olympic games 150,000 condoms were issued to athletes – 15 to each athlete.

Sports and Leisure The purpose of the sports was to distract humans from their daily working life. However even leisure activities are heavily controlled. The most favoured sports are those which require a complicated apparatus which has to be purchased. Sport in particular is an interesting feature of the book, with regular sports such as wrestling and swimming alongside fictional sports including electro-magnetic golf and escalator squash. “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.”

Sports and Leisure (2) The economic side to the sports may follow on from the theory of the ‘cycle of prosperity’ which was used to explain the roaring 1920s in America. Bizarre sports created include chess boxing and mountain unicycling. Chess Boxing - A full match consists of eleven rounds: six rounds of chess, each four minutes long, and five rounds of boxing, each three minutes long. One can win by either achieving a knockout or a checkmate.