59 Fun Facts About Brave New World

In Brave New World, what are the 'feelies'?

Films with touch effects: Lenina is thrilled by the one she takes John to see, but he is appalled by it.

The title Brave New World comes from a line in which play?

The Tempest: Miranda says it on first seeing the shipwrecked visitors, and her father Prospero deflates her with ''Tis new to thee'.

What is the French title of Brave New World, alluding to Leibniz via Voltaire's Candide?

Le Meilleur des mondes: Leibniz meant 'the best of all possible worlds' in earnest, before Voltaire's Candide turned it into mockery.

Which 1954 Aldous Huxley book recounts his experiences of taking mescaline?

The Doors of Perception: Jim Morrison took his band's name, the Doors, from the book's title.

Huxley said Brave New World began as a parody of which H. G. Wells novel?

Men Like Gods: Huxley said he set out to poke fun at Wells but got carried away by his own ideas.

Why are lower castes conditioned to hate the countryside but love country sports?

So they consume more: country sports must need elaborate apparatus and trips out of town, because 'a love of nature keeps no factories busy'.

Helmholtz Watson can't stop laughing when John reads him parents bullying a daughter to marry, from which play?

Romeo and Juliet: a girl pleading with her parents strikes Helmholtz as so absurd that he bursts out laughing, and John angrily locks the book away.

Bokanovsky's Process is a technique for doing what?

Cloning up to 96 people from one egg: the Director boasts that one egg's identical twins can staff a whole small factory.

Which World State technique drums slogans like 'Everyone belongs to everyone else' into children by endless repetition?

Hypnopaedia: early attempts to teach children facts in their sleep failed, but whispered moral slogans became 'the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time'.

What is soma?

A happiness-inducing drug: back in London, Linda takes so much that her doctor expects it to stop her breathing within a month or two.

Where did Huxley get the name soma?

A Vedic ritual drink: the original soma was drunk in solemn religious rites, while the World State hands out soma as a daily ration.

Why are World State children brought into the Hospital for the Dying?

So they won't fear death: the best toys are kept there and they get chocolate cream on death days, so dying feels routine.

Before John discovers Shakespeare, what is the only book his mother Linda owns on the Reservation?

A manual for embryo workers: young John needs a quarter of an hour just to read its title, then throws it on the floor in tears.

What physical oddity marks out Bernard Marx, an Alpha-Plus misfit?

He is unusually short: lower castes are conditioned to link size with rank, so Bernard worries whether a Delta will show him the respect due an Alpha.

Where does the Director threaten to exile Bernard?

Iceland: Bernard swaggers out boasting of his defiance, then panics when he hears the Director is already seeking his replacement.

What is Lenina Crowne's job?

Foetus technician: students first meet her in the Embryo Store, inoculating future tropical workers against disease while they still have gills.

What is the name of the contraceptive device women wear in the World State?

Malthusian belt: it's named for Thomas Malthus, who, ironically, urged moral restraint rather than contraception to check population growth.

The Savage Reservation that Bernard and Lenina visit is in which US state?

New Mexico: Lenina, who has never seen anyone grow old, is horrified by the villagers' poverty, disease and old age.

What is the name of the Reservation village where John was raised?

Malpais: Linda was stranded there after getting lost on holiday, so John grew up in the pueblo but was never accepted by the villagers.

What does Mustapha Mond call the 'chief reason' Shakespeare is banned in the World State?

Because it's old: 'We haven't any use for old things here,' Mond says, and people too content to know passion wouldn't understand it anyway.

Who turns out to be John's father?

The Director of Hatcheries: when John kneels and calls him 'my father' in public, the room roars with laughter and he resigns in shame.

Why is John's parentage so scandalous in the World State?

Because it was procreative: sleeping around is normal, but child-bearing is so obscene that the word 'father' sets off hysterical laughter.

Helmholtz Watson chooses exile to which remote place, hoping bad weather will help his writing?

The Falklands: Mond calls such exile a reward, since the islands hold 'the most interesting set of men and women' anywhere.

What is Mustapha Mond's title?

World Controller for Western Europe: once a physicist whose research went too far, he chose to become a Controller rather than be exiled to an island.

In Mond's 'Cyprus experiment', what happens when an island is populated only with Alphas?

They fall into civil war: everyone schemes for the top jobs, and the few survivors beg to be governed again.

The World State's motto is 'Community, Identity' and what?

Stability: Mond calls it 'the primal and the ultimate need', worth giving up art, free science and religion to secure.

How does Mond sum up John's position at the end of their debate?

He claims the right to be unhappy, and with it the right to grow old, catch typhoid and live in fear of tomorrow: 'I claim them all.'

Where does John retreat to live as a hermit at the end of Brave New World?

A lighthouse near Puttenham: he whips himself there, and once a hidden filmmaker's footage is released, crowds of sightseers descend.

How does Brave New World end for John?

He hangs himself: ashamed of joining the crowd's orgy the night before, he is found by the first sightseers to arrive that evening.

Why does Fanny Crowne share Lenina's last name?

Only ten thousand surnames are in use among two billion people; Lenina's namesake Fanny scolds her for seeing only Henry for four months.

The economist Ludwig von Mises read the novel in 1944 as a satire of what?

Utopian socialism: Mises wrote that 'the public was delighted', yet Huxley's readers 'rushed nonetheless to apply for jobs with the government'.

Which European country banned Brave New World in 1932, the year it was published?

Ireland: US schools have since challenged it too, one complaint being that it 'centered around negative activity'.

Which philosopher called Brave New World 'merely an expansion' of two chapters of his 1931 book The Scientific Outlook?

Bertrand Russell: yet in his published review he held his tongue, praising Huxley's 'usual masterly skill'.

Which media scholar's 1985 book argued that 'Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us'?

Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death argues that television turns news and politics into entertainment, lulling viewers the way Huxley foresaw.

Which Russian novel did a 1946 review say Brave New World must partly derive from?

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin: kept from publication in Soviet Russia, it first came out in English, in the United States.

In Brave New World Revisited, what did Huxley conclude about his 1931 prophecies?

Coming true sooner than he thought: 'much sooner than I thought they would', he wrote, pointing to overpopulation, propaganda and drugs.

Huxley's final novel, the utopian counterpart to Brave New World, is set on the fictional island of what?

Pala: journalist Will Farnaby lands there working for oil interests, then comes to see it as the ideal society just as his oil deal helps doom it.

Which future dystopian novelist was taught French by Huxley at Eton?

George Orwell: in 1949 Huxley wrote to his old pupil praising Nineteen Eighty-Four, yet predicting a future more like Brave New World.

Bernard wants a quiet walk and talk on his first date with Lenina, but where does she take him instead?

A women's wrestling match: Bernard sulks in the crowd all afternoon and says he'd rather be 'myself and nasty' than somebody else, however jolly.

Aldous's grandfather was which Victorian scientist, nicknamed 'Darwin's Bulldog'?

Thomas Henry Huxley: besides championing evolution, he coined the word 'agnostic', supposedly in 1869, from the Greek for 'unknown'.

Which two famous people died on the same day as Aldous Huxley?

John F. Kennedy and C. S. Lewis: at Huxley's own request, his wife Laura injected him with LSD hours before he died.

In 1945 Walt Disney hired Huxley to script which classic, though his version was never used?

Alice in Wonderland: Huxley's script wove in the life of the story's author, and Disney made its own version without it.

Who plays Mustapha Mond in the 1998 NBC television film of Brave New World?

Leonard Nimoy: the TV film trades the novel's bleak finale for a happy ending in which Bernard, played by Peter Gallagher, escapes with Lenina.

The 2020 television adaptation of Brave New World premiered on which streaming service?

Peacock: developed first for Syfy and then ordered by USA Network, it moved to the new streamer for its launch and was cancelled after one season.

Iron Maiden's album Brave New World (2000) marked the return of which singer to the band?

Bruce Dickinson came back with guitarist Adrian Smith, but Janick Gers stayed on, so the band recorded with three guitarists.

Which 1921 Huxley novel has a passage foreshadowing the bottle-bred future of Brave New World?

Crome Yellow: its character Mr Scogan predicts babies raised in 'vast state incubators', so that 'the family system will disappear'.

CBS's two-part 1956 Brave New World, narrated by Aldous Huxley himself, was made for which medium?

Radio: it opened CBS's revived experimental Workshop, and CBS Radio's vice president reasoned, 'We'll never get a sponsor anyway, so we might as well try anything.'

Which 1993 Sylvester Stallone film is said to draw heavily on Brave New World?

Demolition Man: Sandra Bullock's officer is named Lenina Huxley, after the novel's Lenina Crowne and its author.

Who brings Linda the copy of Shakespeare that John reads on the Reservation?

Popé: Linda's lover, he also brings her mescal, and young John, stirred by a line of Shakespeare, tries to stab him but fails.

An eye disease that almost blinded Aldous Huxley as a teenager ended his hopes of which career?

Medicine: he could still read, though with difficulty, and went on to study English literature at Oxford instead.

Most World State women are sterile 'freemartins'; what makes them so before decanting?

Male sex hormone: Mr. Foster says the doses leave them 'guaranteed sterile', with just 'the slightest tendency to grow beards'.

What gets Helmholtz Watson reported to his college's Principal?

Reading students a poem about solitude: the outcry leaves him 'a marked man', yet he feels he's just beginning to have something to write about.

According to gossip, what did a Hatchery mistake put into Bernard Marx's blood-surrogate before decanting?

Alcohol: Fanny says a worker mistook him for a Gamma embryo and dosed him, but Lenina dismisses the rumour as 'nonsense'.

Which thinker's name replaces 'Our Ford' whenever psychological matters come up in the World State?

Sigmund Freud: as 'Our Freud', he is credited with first revealing 'the appalling dangers of family life'.

When John disrupts a handout to Delta workers at London's Hospital for the Dying, what does Helmholtz Watson do?

Joins the fight: Helmholtz cries 'Men at last!' and starts punching, while Bernard holds back, too scared to help.

Which pueblo elder teaches John skills such as coil pottery and bow-making?

Mitsima: yet when the village boys go down into the kiva to become men, John is driven away with stones.

In 2021, Brave New World appeared on a UK postage stamp series celebrating what?

Classic British science fiction: Royal Mail timed the six stamps to mark 75 years since H. G. Wells died and 70 since The Day of the Triffids appeared.

Why won't Mustapha Mond let John go into island exile with his friends?

He wants to see what becomes of John: John swears he won't go on being 'experimented with' and runs away to live alone.

After John becomes a London celebrity, how does high society treat his mother Linda?

Nobody wants to see her: they find her ugly, but Linda doesn't care, since soma was her main reason for coming back.