The battle of future paradigms

Margaret Atwood writes a brilliant and wonderful re-review of "Brave New World" that asks the question have we become the future envisioned by Aldous Huxley or are we more akin to Orwell's "1984"? A snippet:

Which template would win, we wondered. During the cold war, Nineteen Eighty-Four seemed to have the edge. But when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, pundits proclaimed the end of history, shopping reigned triumphant, and there was already lots of quasi-soma percolating through society. True, promiscuity had taken a hit from AIDS, but on balance we seemed to be in for a trivial, giggly, drug-enhanced spend-o-rama: Brave New World was winning the race.

That picture changed, too, with the attack on New York's twin towers in 2001. Thoughtcrime and the boot grinding into the human face could not be got rid of so easily, after all. The Ministry of Love is back with us, it appears, though it's no longer limited to the lands behind the former iron curtain: the west has its own versions now.

The entire review is excellent and has me wanting to read Brave New World all over again. Perhaps I'll pick up a copy on the way out of town for the holiday.