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Brave New Worlds
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this ebook
You are being watched. Your every movement is being tracked, your every word recorded. Your spouse may be an informer, your children may be listening at your door, your best friend may be a member of the secret police. You are alone among thousands, among great crowds of the brainwashed, the well-behaved, the loyal. Productivity has never been higher, the media blares, and the army is ever triumphant. One wrong move, one slip-up, and you may find yourself disappeared -- swallowed up by a monstrous bureaucracy, vanished into a shadowy labyrinth of interrogation chambers, show trials, and secret prisons from which no one ever escapes. Welcome to the world of the dystopia, a world of government and society gone horribly, nightmarishly wrong. What happens when civilization invades and dictates every aspect of your life? From 1984 to The Handmaid's Tale, from Children of Men to Bioshock, the dystopian imagination has been a vital and gripping cautionary force. Brave New Worlds collects the best tales of totalitarian menace by some of today's most visionary writers, including Neil Gaiman, Paolo Bacigalupi, Orson Scott Card, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Ursula K. Le Guin. When the government wields its power against its own people, every citizen becomes an enemy of the state. Will you fight the system, or be ground to dust beneath the boot of tyranny?
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Reviews for Brave New Worlds
Rating: 3.929347869565217 out of 5 stars
4/5
92 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I have an unrepentant love of dystopian stories. I think it's an amazing vehicle to delve into men's psyche, especially when you look at the societies created. I also don't believe in utopia (someone's utopia is always someone else's dystopia).
This anthology is a great collection of different dystopias focusing on different issues. There are newer and older stories. Some of them look at man's (in)humanity, some look at totalitarian issues and how they can be implemented, and some look at the whole.
It's a great set, and it's organized thematically, which is fantastic.
Anything that includes Le Guin's "The Ones That Walk Away from Omelas" is always a win. If that story doesn't punch you in the gut, you're dead inside.
I will say, though, that I think the "choose your own adventure" story was my favorite, just out of childhood glee. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is one of the best anthologies I've ever read. It includes classics ("Those Who Walk Away From the Omelas, "The Lottery" are both hereand new works, famous authors ("The Minority Report" by Philip K Dick) and relative unknowns. Every story I've read in here has been great, and some have just been astounding. Thoughtful commentary by the editor ties it all together.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While reading this book over the past week or so, I have been asked by several people whether this book is a sequel to the classic dystopia written by Aldous Huxley. Answer: no, it isn't. The title is of course a reference to that work, but the book is not explicitly about Huxley's (although one story, "Arties Aren't Stupid" did remind me of it). Brave New Worlds is an anthology of dystopian stories by both famous and mostly unknown authors.
Like any anthology, the quality varies. Some of the stories I couldn't put down, while others I had to force myself to finish. The good definitely outweighed the bad for me in this reading experience though and I found a bunch of new authors to watch for!
The dystopian societies are ranged around a number of themes:
-Getting to live an easy life in exchange for suffering (either of one or many)
-Babies not allowed
-Not enough babies
-Mining (yeah, I don't know either...These were not my favorite stories)
-Removing all the homosexuals
-Removing all the heterosexuals
-Advertising
-Growing old too slowly
-Growing old too quickly
-And more...
A quick word about a couple favorites and least favorites.
The Best: I absolutely adored the story "Just Do It" by Heather Lindsley. Unfortunately, Heather has not yet written a book, so I can't read any more of her stuff. In her dystopian world, advertising has gone crazy! Ad men actually create darts that are thrown at people on the street. If you get hit by a dart, you get a craving so strong for something (i.e. french fries or fish sandwiches) that you have to go get whatever it is immediately. Even worse, it might not stop there.
Also awesome was "Caught in the Organ Draft" by Robert Silverberg. Although his name didn't ring any bells with me, Silverberg has been writing sci fi since the fifties and has a ton of books. Written in 1972, this short story considers a world where war is waged by robots to spare lives...so that all the young people can be used as organ donors as part of a draft. They only take non-vital organs, like the 'spare' kidney or lung, so it's cool, right? And the important adults can now live for upwards of a hundred and fifty years! If you liked Neal Shusterman's Unwind, you definitely don't want to miss this story.
The Worst: I actually liked "Amaryllis" by Carrie Vaughn, but in the context of the anthology, it was awful. The problem: it's not a dystopia. At all. The main character is being treated poorly by an authority figure and the society certainly isn't ideal, but her problem is resolved when they go to a higher authority. The higher authority fixes everything and not in a brainwashing kind of way. The editor even mentions in the story's introduction that it's not a dystopia. So why is it here?
"Sacrament" by Matt Williamson has, in my mind, the problem of the former, as well as being a story I did not enjoy and which did not, to me, seem particularly well-crafted. The story is from the perspective of a torturer in a society where advertising is art. The torturer likes his job, not in a creepy way, so he says, but takes pride in it. His father was one of the great ad-men/artists. The story lacks a point that I could find, does not successfully entwine the father's story with the son's and the main character is not unhappy with the world around him.
So yeah, lots of great stories (way more than I mentioned above, like "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and "Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick). Plus, there is awesome cover art and a fabulous bibliography of dystopian literature at the back! This is a must for dystopia fans. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A comprehensive compilation of dystopian fiction, from classic stories to brand-new ones.Not only is this a great collection of dystopian short stories, it's a nice round-up of speculative fiction in general. It includes two of my all-time favorite stories: "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson and "Those Who Walk Away from Omelos" by Ursula K. Le Guin. There are several essential classics that I hadn't yet read, including "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick, "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" by Harlan Ellison, as well as stories by Ray Bradbury, J.G. Ballard, Kate Wilhelm, James Morrow, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Silverberg, Orson Scott Card, Paolo Bacigalupi and Cory Doctorow, plus a comic written by Neil Gaiman. As with any anthology, this one can be uneven; I'm not a fan of Geoff Ryman, for instance, so I'm not sure why he's the only author with two selections. Overall, though, the quality of the writing is very high, and the ideas presented are chilling and thought-provoking, which is what a good dystopian story should be. Adams has arranged the stories more or less by theme, which is interesting, especially since all the gender-based dystopias are together. However, it might have been interesting to read them chronologically, too, to see how our societal fears have changed over the years. I'm happy to include this anthology with my small collection of short stories on sub-genres that particularly engage me: gothic, apocalyptic and now dystopian.Read in 2015 for the SFFCat.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent stories- though whether they're "dystopian" or "utopian" is sometimes a matter of judgment.So: What makes something a dys- or u-topia? This book sure made me think about that!Add in that my utopia may be your dystopia, and... well. Interesting!I strongly recommend this book; it's fascinating.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A few decent stories, but overall disappointing. ... And I love - LOVE - dystopian stories/ novels. Get it from the library and flip through it.