Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

For some reason, I was satisfied with this book. Yes, it bore an uncanny resemblance to 1984, in all its detailed sordidness, but it had some advantages. After all, Brave New World was written 15 years before, rendering Huxley more prophetical than Orwell. And Huxley actually allowed for God. One character, wrapped up in the government system as he was, even said he believed there is a God, albeit one revealed through a pluralistic worldview involving all the gods mixed together.

Secondarily, Brave New World was just written more skillfully. Huxley employed a concise, fast-paced prose style, and his characters and world were better-looking than Orwell's, at least in my imagination. Orwell meandered and spent scores of pages soliloquizing on boring details of his futuristic government; Huxley neglected to do so.

I was disappointed with the end of Brave New World, which involves a key character reverting to asceticism before suicide, but Huxley's worldview, while including some spirituality, was by no means exclusively Christian.

One last reason for my enthusiam for this novel would have to be that the author was, I am almost ashamed to say it, surprisingly good-looking. No, really. If you just remove his dorky inch-thick glasses, you have something there.