From: kcalder@blueyonder.co.uk   
      
   In message , Sourcerer   
    writes   
   >In article <4qR7a5jBUc0$Ewhr@cableinet.co.uk>,   
   >Kevin Calder   wrote:   
      
      
   >(in another article to this thread, you quote:   
   >"example, when I taught Utopian/Dystopian Fiction"...)   
      
   >Back in the late 60s when sf made it into US English lit   
   >courses, the Utopian/Dystopian framework was adopted mainly   
   >because the only "scifi" the profs recognized were BNW and   
   >1984 (plus Verne and Wells, both of whom slotted easily   
   >into the framework).   
      
   Incidentally when I wrote on BNW it was about how its not really   
   dystopian either.  In fact I think that BNW is positively utopian!   
   Everything in the BNW is perfect, its an effectively stable society,   
   when the few dissidents are offered the chance to go off and live   
   somewhere else where they won't be bothering any one.  Where organised   
   society is capable of providing for the needs of the people, those needs   
   are met, where organised society cannot cater to the people, i.e. in   
   terms of their destructive destabilising impulses, these impulses are   
   removed by conditioning and for the benefit of everyone.  The world   
   controller and his planners take a very practical position and, assuming   
   that organised society is the best way to make the most people the most   
   happy, decide that people must be partially re-engineered to maintain   
   social balance and stability.  Most people regard the savage & his   
   admiration for the outlawed works of Shakespeare to be the "good"   
   component of the novel, and the all powerful state to the be the "evil".   
   Its no coincidence that the savage and shakespeare most resemble the   
   reader :)  Many aspects of the BNW are rationally desirable, i.e.   
   compare the violent, misogynistic reaction of the savage when Lenina   
   starts acting sexual to the way that children in the BNW are encouraged   
   to play "sex games" from an early age to ensure that so shame is   
   associated with sexual activity, or consider the Savage's irrational   
   reaction to his mothers death e,t.c. and it starts to seem like the   
   novel is using this Utopia to criticise our irrational values, which   
   like shakespear are full of irrational, destructive emotion and quite   
   bloodsoaked.   
      
   Anyway, that's the rough of it.  I think that BNW is a novel which   
   suggests that a fully realised utopia, like the BNW, would appear to us   
   to be an abomination.  I think it is, in one way, a novel about how we   
   don't really value utopias because we are appalled by the fixity of   
   them, their perfect stability.   
      
   And some other stuff...   
      
   If anyway is interested in discussing BNW I can flesh out my position.   
      
   Anyway,   
   --   
   Kevin Calder   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)