From: Intelligence Squared To: j leevacation@gmai .com> Subject: Adam Gopnik and Will Self in Brave New World vs Nineteen Eighty-Four Date: The, 03 Oct 2017 15:55:32 +0000 r uneingence - Mr 0 Ie U nen IIw ,,Brave New World vs Nineteen Eighty-Four Tues 28th Nov. 7pm. Emmanuel Centre Dystopian books and films are in the zeitgeist. Reflecting the often dark mood of our times, Intelligence Squared are staging a contest between two of the greatest dystopian novels. Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Each book captured the nightmares of the 1930s and 40s. But which vision looks more prescient to us now in the 21st century? Are we living in George Orwell's sinister surveillance state? Or in Aldous Huxley's vapid consumerist culture? To battle it out, we are bringing two celebrated writers, Adam Gopnik and Will Self, to our stage. After Donald Trump was elected, it seemed as if Nineteen Eighty- Four had clinched it. The book shot to the top of the bestseller charts. It felt so ominously familiar. In Orwell's dystopia, the corporate state controls the news, insisting that 'whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth'. That sounds very like Trump's 'alternative facts', and the war he is waging on the lake news' media. Orwell imagined two-way telescreens spying on every citizen's home. Today we have Amazon's 'always listening' Alexa device, while Google, Facebook and the security agencies hoover up our personal data for their own ends. Orwell also described an Inner Party - two percent of the population - enjoying all the privileges and political control. Isn't that scarily close to the 'one percent', reviled for their wealth and influence by anti-capitalists today? No wonder everyone rushed out to buy the book. But Orwell's critics say Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dated dystopia. a vision that died along with communism. The novel that better foresaw our present, they say, is Brave New World. Here Aldous Huxley imagined a plastic tech