Do American want to ban 'Brave New World'? (cnet News, 4/13/2011)
Excerpt: I am not sure what sorts of people go to libraries these days.
I had always assumed that Google and Amazon had corralled the library system between them, leaving few with the need to go and sit next to the coughing, the chatting, and the lonely.
But it seems that people do still go to libraries and still object to some of the books they see there. It so happens that the American Libraries Association, conscious of its continuing role in monitoring the national mood and culture, issues a list of those books that have been challenged by individuals or news organizations in 2010.
And there, at No. 3, sits one of the more joyous works of science fiction, Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World".
Should you have not managed to encounter this book, it is a clearly seditious tome that offers such ideas as "Community, Identity and Stability" being the motto of a World State in the mid-21st century.
It offers such utterly nonsensical notions as people taking a drug called "soma" to battle depression. It also offers the idea that the highest form of entertainment will be a James Cameron 3D movie. Well, actually, in the book it's called a "feelie", and it gets you all over. That's a similar reaction to the one I get when I watch a James Cameron movie.
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