At first I was a little bored by the “shocking” futuristic utopian society that the text describes. Tubes baby and behavioural conditioning taken to the extreme and a serious cult of youth. It felt like everything was so widely different that it couldn’t scary because I couldn’t tell how society could even get to that point. I read it like an anthropological study of a world far away. Where people are weird and believe weird things. That feeling stayed with me pretty much throughout the book until 2-3 chapters before the end, when the Savage meets with the world leader and discuss philosophy.

That conversation is, I believe, the main point that the author wanted to make. He invented a world and characters inhabiting it and staged it all so that those two people could talk for an evening. It seemed like a set-up, a sort of devil’s advocate conversation of “what ifs” and the only way he could make his point was to give us background (the rest of the book.)

I have to say, that conversation is pretty intense and brings ideas together that I’d never envisioned before and for that the book is very interesting. On the other hand, I pity teenagers who were forced to read this for school because I don’t think I would have gotten so much out of it without philosophy classes in both college and university to give me some background.

I’ll probably read it again in 5 years and find it completly different. I think this book will stick with me for a while. A slicky-oily-akward of feeling in the back of my head when I’ll read some technological articles. 

***   for appreciation of the story

***** for “iconic book” status