I came across a couple of interesting posts posing the question in the title and arguing whether Huxley, author of The Brave New World was more correct about the future than Orwell, author of 1984. Their future was our present day. My mental jury is still out on this one but I am leaning towards an opinion by the author that Huxley saw the beginning of the situation and that Orwell saw the end.
I've posted a couple of images and excerpts from the two articles listed below where you can find more illustrations and learn more about the differences and similarities of the two visions.
Excerpts:
While many have pointed out that the Middle-East/Far-East are drifting to a more "Orwellian" world and the West is a more "Huxleyan" environ, the merger of the two dystopias is seemingly growing each day. As The Guardian previously noted, Huxley's dystopia is a totalitarian society, ruled by a supposedly benevolent dictatorship whose subjects have been programmed to enjoy their subjugation through conditioning and the use of a narcotic drug - the rulers of Brave New World have solved the problem of making people love their servitude. On the Orwellian front, we are doing rather well – as the revelations of Edward Snowden have recently underlined. We have constructed an architecture of state surveillance that would make Orwell gasp.
The most striking parallel of course is that both men foresaw the future as totalitarian rather than democratic and free.
Both Big Brother’s world and the Brave New World are ruled by authoritarian elites of a basically socialist/communist nature, whose only real purpose is the maintenance of their own power and privileges
LEARN MORE ->
So what do you think? Who was right or were they both seeing different parts of the same future?