Whenever I go to a bookstore I inevitably walk past a few books I’ve looked at a dozen times but never brought home.

I even think to myself, “I’ve looked at this a dozen times, I should probably just go ahead and read it.” And then I put it down, walk away and get something else.

I am happy to report that Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” will no longer be one of those books.

If you’re not familiar, “Brave New World” is in the same vein as “1984” and “Fahrenheit 451” — stories that see a future world controlled to an exceptional degree by a government. In my post about “Fahrenheit 451” I mentioned that author Ray Bradbury explained “1984” as author George Orwell tackling the implications of governmental control while he deals with the societal fallout.

Bradbury writes about a government that bans books in order to deny its people information. Orwell’s government changes the information to suit its present needs. Huxley’s government manipulates its people from birth such that it is unnecessary to worry about history. The past is banned and irrelevant, pushed aside for a world of newness and consumption.

I’m always a fan of editions that include extra notes about the story or the author. They help put things in context of the time (“Brave New World” was first published in 1932) and often include primary sources from the author.

My copy of this book has a letter Huxley wrote to Orwell in October 1949, a few months after “1984” was published. Huxley thanks Orwell for sending him a copy of the book, then spends the entire letter explaining how Orwell’s version of a controlling future government is “unlikely.” He sees his story as an evolution of the Big Brother regime.

“I feel that the nightmare of 1984 is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that world I imagined in Brave New World.”

The letter comes off almost condescending and mean-spirited, but Huxley at least ends on a positive note:

“Of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war–in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.”

In Huxley’s world, children are manufactured through a highly efficient process that creates distinct classes with specific characteristics. The one thing the vast majority of people share is an unquestioning adherence to all of the mantras that have been systematically drilled into their heads since birth.

The system creates a world where dissent doesn’t have to be squelched — it’s non-existent. Everyone has a job perfectly fitted to their abilities and is happy in the simplicity of having everything they believe they want.

The leader explains, “They’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.”

There’s no need for Orwell’s Thought Police when the citizens instinctively do what is desired of them.

When reading these “futuristic” books written long in our past, it’s hard not to think about what the author may have gotten right. One tool of social engineering the “Brave New World” government uses is soma, a hallucinogenic drug that will turn any frown upside down. People who feel the least bit of anxiety, fear or sadness say one of the soma-related slogans to themselves as if they instinctively know the drug will solve their problem:

“Half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon…”

Many of the workers get a daily ration as soon as their shift is over. Huxley describes the scene of one group waiting in line for their soma, and the crusading figure who attempts to disrupt the ritual and break the government’s spell.

I couldn’t help but compare them to a Black Friday crowd waiting for a store to open. The ritual, the thing they need, will be theirs if they wait in this line. As long as everything goes according to plan, everyone is calm and continues to be happy.

At the soma line, the character muscles his way to the front. He grabs the daily ration and throws it on the ground. All hell breaks loose.

At Wal-Mart, flatscreen TVs are 70 percent off. The minutes count down as the store prepares to open. The crowd slowly pushes towards the door in anticipation. An employee unlocks one door and swings it open. The front of the line walks in calmy, or rather tries to. The people in the back want those TVs — need them. They surge. In our world, unlike Huxley’s, there’s no police force on hand to spray a calming gas on the crowd.

Nah, that could never happen.