Numero Dos

So. I got some background information on the wonderful authors of Brave New World and 1984. It was illuminating, to say they least. I was mistaken when I assumed that both Huxley and Orwell wrote their books with the same goal: to warn against the dangers of totalitarian societies. For Orwell, that was it. Huxley, on the other hand wrote his with more of an anti-scientific control point of view than I had originally assumed. A warning against a totalitarian society was part of his message. However, not the focal point of this novel.

Huxley was a communist, a pacifist, and an occasional psychoactive drug user. He wrote many books mocking the early 20th century society of England. He was born in England in 1894, and was left mostly blind by a virus he contracted in childhood. He was a conscientious objector to WWI and crusaded enthusiastically for his pacifist views. Huxley was very wary of the abundance of scientific innovations coming onto the scene during the early 20th century, as were many other people throughout the world. His main purpose in writing Brave New World was to warn against this. Huxley moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1920s, and was later attacked by English critics for "hiding out" in the United States while England fought the war.

George Orwell was born in 1903 in England. He served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922-1927 and later helped combat WWI propaganda from Japan and Germany in India. He was critical of communism but he was considered a socialist. After fighting and being wounded in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell gained a distaste for totalitarian governments. After this he wrote 1984 and Animal Farm. Orwell also began a crusade questioning the "accepted" versions of history and expressed concerns over WWI versions of events told by the Allies.