It is not explained why doing menial work is inconsistent - if you're an Alpha - with a life pharmacological hedonism - nor, for that matter, with genetically-precoded wetware of invincible bliss. The lower orders are necessary in BNW because Alphas - even soma-fuelled Alphas - could allegedly never be happy doing menial jobs. Servile, purposely brain-damaged Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons toil away at the bottom. Intellectually superior Alphas are the top-dogs. Society is stratified by genetically-predestined caste.

'.Audiobook of the novel Brave New World which is a benevolent dictatorship: a static, efficient, totalitarian welfare-state. When he discovers that treasured ideals such as love mean nothing in this 'brave new world', where romance is ridiculous, marriage shocking and parenthood shameful, John's world is shattered - and his reaction will show Bernard and Helmholtz what rebellion really means.īased on Aldous Huxley's 1932 masterpiece, widely considered one of the greatest novels of all time, this chilling dramatisation set in a futuristic totalitarian society stars Jonathan Coy, Justin Salinger, Milton Lopes and Anton Lesser. Into this sterile society comes an outsider, John - a man born into squalor and suffering, but raised on The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a book which has shaped his entire life. Human beings are merely docile citizens: divided into castes, brainwashed and controlled by the state and dependent on the drug soma for superficial gratification. There is no poverty, crime or sickness - but no creativity, art or culture either. It's 2116, and Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson are token rebels in an irretrievably corrupted society where promiscuity is the norm, eugenics a respectable science, and morality turned upside down. A gripping BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Aldous Huxley's classic dystopian novel

Brave new world audiobook