Adrian Wooldridge
Aug 27, 2025 – 5.00am
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My colleague John Authers recently argued that George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) is the most prophetic novel about our era. I would suggest that an earlier book written by another Old Etonian deserves to share the palm: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932).
Brave New World envisions a future in which genetic engineering has become so advanced that human beings are designed as cogs in the great industrial machine that is modernity: rulers (alphas), middle managers (betas), semi-skilled workers (gammas), low-skilled workers (deltas) and menial workers (epsilons).
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