Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (British, 1932)

Summary:
It is the year 632 after Ford age, a year of stability, in London, the famous city as we know it but in a non-defined time in the future. Since the Nine-Year War, in 141 d.F, people live in a controlled society that has eliminated “uncivilized” practices such as religion, totemism or christianism, history, democracy, the past, books, diseases, ageing, pain, love, monogamy, viviparous conception and the concept of family. Society is now conformed by two castes: the first or high one, formed by Alphas and Betas (with their respective subcastes plus and minus) and a second or inferior one formed by Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons. Now that reproduction conceived by natural means has been removed, society is reproduced from the bottle. Alphas and Betas, in charge of the most intelectual and scientific Jobs, are produced one at a time, an egg for each adult. On the contrary, the inferior castes, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons are reproduced massively as identical clones in Bokanovksy groups. As for education, groups receive it in their sleep during childhood and in early youth, and it is called hypnopedic behavioral education, although the values that are reinforced are different for each group. During conductual education, castes learn the place where they belong and assimilate values that share with their equals in the same group, as well as the universal values such as overconsumption of products (clothes, sexual bubblegum) and of soma, a drug which eliminates completely any kind of feeling or human instinct such as: pain, anger, love, the desire of correspond to someone and be corresponding. It is through controlled science that a happy society is assured, free of worries and concerns that might interfere with the established system, the social order and the commonwealth. For this reason, a character known as Bernard Marx, who, having interests different from the ones of the community, remains isolated from that community. But he is not the only one and, in an attempt to stick to the local practices, he undertakes a trip accompanied by Lenina, a Beta-Plus citizen, to the Wild Reserve, a place, that due to unfavorable geographic, climatic and resource condictions, it is not worth civilizing. The Wild Reserve in New Mexico is the only place where society still exists as it was known before: in there, people still believed in monogamy, marriage, religion and viviparous reproduction. In that place, Bernard discovers that people still grow old and degenerate; sterilization and cleaning are not a priority. Is in this location where Linda lives, an excivilized who some time in the summer traveled to the reserve with a companion, no less than the current Director of the Incubacion center, the same way Lenina would do it with Bernard in 632 d.F, but who ended up in the reserve bailed, pregnant and without a way out. As the product of the union of Linda and Popé, a native from the reserve, John, also known as Mr. Wild, is born. With a scientific interest in mind, Bernard manages to go back to London with the excivilized mother and her son. In the Civilization, John loses his mother because of soma and loses himself because of the shocking experience of being in the civilization. In an attempt to recover the humanity that John considers lost in his bottled Friends, he tries, without success, to make them stop using soma. The only thing he achieves is to associate with some people that, like him, had individual interests in religion, beauty, and happiness, subjects considered dangerous for common order and social stability, and, for that reason, they are sent to some island. This does not happen to John, Mr. Wild, who opts to live in exhile and grieves for the crimes commited during his stay in the civilized capital London. Or at least he tries until the Civilization itself, entertained by his strange individual practices, goes after him. John, in an attempt to escape from the civilization, commits suicide.

Another summary:
In a world where giving birth is outdated due to previous overpopulation, babies grown in test tubes are the norm. To secure order, social ranks are predetermined before ‘birth’ and are not subject to change. Scientists have developed a way to genetically manipulate the batches of babies to be hatched in order for the future citizens to have the adequate traits to be able to do their also predetermined jobs. Fot that reason, lower class citizens are required to be ‘born’ dumb and submissive, and are consequently destined to undertake the least desirable works such as sewage cleaning. Bernard Marx, the protagonist of the story, is an outcast. Due to neglect by the hatchery worker in charge of his in-test tube growth, Bernard turned out to be short and unattractive, features typical of lower class citizens. But, since he shares the high intellect (along with the most appealing physical features, a higher intellectual capacity is reserved for superior social classes) with his A-caste peers, Bernard cannot be openly treated as an inferior,yet he finds himself shunned. The uniqueness of his condition, along with the loneliness it entails, lead him to condemn the conditioning programme he works in, a process done either by hypnopaedia or by consumption of a drug called ‘soma’, and that keeps the population happy, carefree, and compliant. In spite of his differences, Lenina Crowne, a popular hatchery worker, whom Bernard is in love with regardless of his negative view on sentimentality, agrees to go on a holiday with him. The couple meet Linda and her son John soon after they arrive in New Mexico Reservation. Because Linda used to be a citizen of London—as Lenina and Bernard are—and John is eager to see the world she has told him so much about, Bernard manages to bring them back with him and Lenina. Once in London, Linda and John become popular for their ‘savagery’; away from London for so long, Linda has had no access to the technology that would prevent her from looking old. Her aging is a quite a sensation, but not as much as the born-in-the-old-way John; moreover, John is an attractive young man who constantly speaks with Shakespearean cadences, an author long forgotten in the civilized world. After the death of his mother and Lenina’s inability to reciprocate his romantic feelings despite her desperate sexual advances towards him, John decides to free the people by destroying the soma supplies. While a former friend of Bernard, Helmholtz Watson, tries to help John in destroying the drug, Bernard tries to dissuade them in order to protect his newfound status. John and Helmholtz’s attempt fails and, together with Bernard, they are imprisoned. Bernard and Helmholtz are exiled, but John is to remain in the country. Although he seeks peace in solitude, John is constantly harassed by the citizens, which ultimately leads him to commit suicide.

Another summary:
The novel is set in the future, in the year 632. After a a war that had major effects on the planet, there exist the need to reestablish society and modify it the way the world was organized in the past. The society depicted here could be arguably better than the one in which the author lived; however, we see a world overflooded with a totalitarian happiness where freedom is practically non-existent. New technologies and techniques are implemented for the development of procedures and processess which grants the domination of population, the most important being the breeding of humans in laboratories through well-established and strict biotechnological processess. Race has no major importance, but castes do, and all of them have the final purpose of perpetuating the system through consumption and the culture of pleasure.
 
 The inhabitants of this world are divided in five castes: alphas, betas, gammas, deltas and epsillons, each of which is subdivided in two groups: plus and minus. Every group has different functions in society, and some of them are required, for example, to perform physical duty, while others take part in intellectual activites or factory labor. Nonetheless, all of them execute their duties without questioning. Although the events take place in specific places of the world, it can be inferred that the domination has reached the entire world. The planet, now organized as an unique state, has controllers who survey how well the activities are carried out in their respective zones. Despite this, some zones, for example New Mexico or Samoa are not under control, provided they do not represent a significant economical income for the interests of the world leaders. 
 
 Since the novel was written around the time of Henry Ford, thus resting on the ideals of mass production, its reaction to the use of technological means aiming to control human kind.(?) Each person is conditioned to serve the upper caste and is instructed to be happy in their own way, which means losing their individuality. The oppression, however, cannot be noticed by them because of the conditioning in which they have been instructed even before they were born. The supression of old religious traditions and culture by the state and the creation of official lines of thought makes it practically impossible to become conscious of their reality; furthermore, sex and pleasure are taken as the highest values that must be preserved by society, removing concepts such as family or monogamy. The role of the drug ”Soma“ is essential to maintain the stability of the state; it does not let people experience undesirable feelings such as sadness, this leads to the core conflict of the novel, which is the reaction from society to what they see as inapproppriate and deviated from their costumes.
 
 The objective of the author is merely to present the society in which one of the main characters, Bernard Marx, an alpha-plus lives. After a trip to an Island accompanied by Lenina Crowne, a technician at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, Bernard gets back to England with John, "the savage", and his mother, Linda, who was previously in a relationship with Bernard's boss, Thomas, and was also abandoned in the island while being pregnant. John gets to know the ways of the world as he is treated as a rarity and a demi-celebrity. Marx and his friend, Watson, are sent into exile to an island. John, on the other hand, feeling overwhelmed, commits suicide.

World view: The world portrayed in the story is an hypothetical society which seems to be worse than the one the author lives in.
Future projections: It’s a negative emotional reaction against technological (transcendental, evolutive) or social progress. As such, It shows the horrible consequences of utopia or at least portrays skepticism or disappointment in regard to scientific or technological miracles.
Ideology: The majority is oppressed by a ruling elite or an individual powergroup that come to dominate society to their own interests.
Characters, plot and writing style: Black humor and satire are employed to expose, criticize or shame individuals or the society itself into improvement.
Classification: Non-dystopia