Which one of these would you most recommend?

Sci-Fi Reviews
1
Leave a comment if you want to
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four
  • Brave New World
  • Foundation
  • Dune
  • The Handmaid’s Tale
  • Frankenstein
  • Fahrenheit 451
  • The Three-Body Problem
  • Existence
  • The Time Machine
0 voters
2

The foreword to Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” makes a powerful argument for BNW over 1984.

3

I’d recommend – not comparing quality or enjoyability, but urgency and relevance – The Handmaid’s Tale. (Not suggesting this should be everyone’s criteria.)

As to BNW vs. 1984: the eternal debate about who was “righter” is interesting. I’ve not read Amusing Ourselves to Death which “is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right,” but I think any verdict is probably temporary.

Orwellian and… Huxleyian(?) mechanisms have been at work in reality for decades — perhaps cycling in prominence. One may pave the way for the other.

I feel like BNW may come across as more far-fetched and less alarming than 1984. People love to think: I’m immune to propaganda, I’m not easily manipulated, I wouldn’t be coddled and distracted into passivity.

The straightforward authoritarian dystopia of 1984, though, should be properly terrifying to anyone half paying attention.

4

Atwood is a fellow Torontonian, so I see her name pop up a lot. Apparently she never thought of Handmaid’s Tale as SF but rather as simply speculative fiction.

5

This new version of FRANKENSTEIN looks good. More Victor, more Arctic, less goofy neck bolts.

Modern Prometheus?