BRAVE NEW WORLD

Chapter 1 overview....

• A. F. 632----current year
• Bokanovsky's Process----some kind of sterilizing technique----"One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress."
• "Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!"---the future of science.... no originality or imaginative running free....just order like a dictatorship...
• Planetary motto-"Community, Identity, Stability."
• Bokanovsky's Process limits- "Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average."
• Mr. Foster-scientist at the factory. He is ecstatic to beat gamete producing ovary records.
• "Made them taste the rich blood surrogate on which it fed."----Disturbing....
• '"We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future…" He was going to say "future World controllers," but correcting himself, said "future Directors of Hatcheries," instead.'-----Again like a dictatorship because class rank already established from birth based on genes. This slighty reminds me of Gattaca.
• "The surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through the lung at longer intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par."---Again, this is the factories way of ensuring there are certain humans with defects. Decrease oxygen will lead to mental and physical defects which will be evident later in life. This is a way of ensuring some humans will be better than others.

My personal analysis:

Kind of sickening of this world, has pioneered in science at molecular levels that are amazing and incalculable, but these scientists have chosen to play god. They design who gets to have better qualities than others and who gets to be elite. Obviously, I disagree with these methods but in this world, scientists have decided what is the norm, and the norm is a sort of dictatorship. Very good introductory chapter because it explains the views of many people and the people of that time have grown to the idea that influencing genes and deciding who becomes elite is perfectly normal. My nerdy side of me loves the idea of this sort of dystopian way of living and involves molecular biology so looking forward to the rest of the novel.