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[JoshuaFH]

I've read Brave New World (while listening to Iron Maiden's Brave New World) but that was a while ago, my memory of it might be a little thin.

From what I recollect though, the antagonist governments reached the same conclusion, just devised different methods of enforcing that conclusion. The conclusion being "Stability is more important than individual happiness."; Brave New World kept people perpetually doped up and indoctrinated into a society starved of any real hardship, thus keeping the populace emotionally infantile and unable to even imagine that their lives are that bad or need improving. 1984 kept people constantly paranoid and fearful, and starved them of friendship, family, free time, education, even the concepts of objective truth or facts, absolutely anything that might upset the enforced social hierarchy or allow any mobility at all; the ruling class believed in power, power for the sake of power, because the pursuit and maintenance of power was, to them, the end-all be-all goal as the most stable social equilibrium.

The two books even have a similar arc in the main character getting to meet natural, untainted people and getting to compare their own miserable existence against their freer, more substantive and meaningful existences.

[delphonso]

Read "We" by Zamyatin. I believe Brave New World was inspired by it as it is very similar, but predates both 1984 and Brave New World.

[feelotraveller]

Good call.

Heading out in another direction is Ursula Le Guin's the Dispossessed.  While being more utopian (or even atopian?) than dystopian, it takes up many themes around the the relation between the individual and the state in a sci-fi setting.  However now it is the protagonist who could be regarded as less tainted and the strangers that he meets throughout the book as being more miserable, but not without ambiguity.

[NJW2000]

I've read Brave New World (while listening to Iron Maiden's Brave New World) but that was a while ago, my memory of it might be a little thin.

From what I recollect though, the antagonist governments reached the same conclusion, just devised different methods of enforcing that conclusion. The conclusion being "Stability is more important than individual happiness."; Brave New World kept people perpetually doped up and indoctrinated into a society starved of any real hardship, thus keeping the populace emotionally infantile and unable to even imagine that their lives are that bad or need improving. 1984 kept people constantly paranoid and fearful, and starved them of friendship, family, free time, education, even the concepts of objective truth or facts, absolutely anything that might upset the enforced social hierarchy or allow any mobility at all; the ruling class believed in power, power for the sake of power, because the pursuit and maintenance of power was, to them, the end-all be-all goal as the most stable social equilibrium.

The two books even have a similar arc in the main character getting to meet natural, untainted people and getting to compare their own miserable existence against their freer, more substantive and meaningful existences.

Except in BNW the decidedly miserable existence is the freer, more substantive one.

I think Huxley, much later in life, suggested he was 50/50 on which life was better, though I can't find the quote. Island can be read as a kind of synthesis, if that's something you care about.

[JoshuaFH]

I made a grammatical faux pas there, I meant the protagonist/citizen of the dystopia was the more miserable one, and that the untainted peoples were happier through the virtue of their unhindered humanity.

The premise is that the nanny state excludes real happiness through disallowing the full range of actual human experience. I'm a Luddite, I know.

List of books to possibly read, for future reference:
Island - Aldous Huxley
The Dispossessed - Ursual Le Guin
We - Zamyatin

[JoshuaFH]

I was vaguely interested in reading some of the old literature present in The Longing, but old authors have a habit of making no sense whatsoever. Like, I was trying to enjoy Moby Dick, but holy fuck is it hard to follow what's happening or what the author is talking about. Not just Herman Melville, but a lot of pre-1900's authors just have this extravagant style of writing that is intentionally obtuse and difficult to read. Is coherency a modern invention, or am I just a dense philistine?

[delphonso]

I think it is just trending styles. Modern writing is all similar enough that you could read a paragraph and have a good guess if it was written within the last 30 years or so.

If you read a lot in the older styles, you get used to it. I have noticed I lose my edge when I read modern stuff and try to switch back to like...Hume or something.

[MrRoboto75]

A lot of old books have much much slower pacing, I've noticed.

Isn't The Dick of Moby two books in one?  One half the well known fight between Sir Patrick Stewart and a whale, and the other basically Whaling Facts(tm)?

[heydude6]

My recommendations for old classics would be The Count of Monte Cristo and Brahm Stocker's Dracula. Both are pre-1900 classics that still hold up today. The first few chapters are a bit slow, but I was surprised by how entertaining they were once they got going.

[hector13]

A lot of old books have much much slower pacing, I've noticed.

Isn't The Dick of Moby two books in one?  One half the well known fight between Sir Patrick Stewart and a whale, and the other basically Whaling Facts(tm)?

It’s not even whaling facts. One chapter is Melville going on at length about the colour white and how various different cultures see it, and this just to illustrate that Moby Dick being white makes it more frightening.

One chapter is also him talking about how whales have three traits that make them difficult quarry. One is the fact they’re huge so even if you harpoon it and go to deepest darkest Africa for years and then go back to whaling you might encounter the same whale with your harpoon in it, even though you’ve been in deepest darkest Africa for years and the whale has probably been around the world a few times. Another is that they’re fearless, and will quite happily ram your boats in defense of its life. I cannot remember the third one because I don’t why he went on so much about a harpooner being in deepest darkest Africa for pages and pages when he could’ve spent a paragraph doing it and it reminded me of the chapter (AN ENTIRE CHAPTER) about the colour white so I stopped reading because holy fuck Herman I want to know about Ahab and Moby Dick not you going on at great length how whaling ships passing each other will come together so the two crews can pass on news to each other about what’s happening in the world and maybe share resources too and the captains can get together and chat or whatever but then tell me in a couple of sentences that Ahab didn’t do that because he’s a monomaniacal madman.

[NRDL]

Finally finished Robin Hobb's "The Fitz and the Fool" Trilogy. I've read all the Fitzchivalry trilogies in the Realm of the Elderlings saga, and man, what a ride.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was obvious that Fitz was gonna carve a stone wolf from the first book in the trilogy. It only occurred to me that the 3 as 1 would happen when I was nearing the end of the final book. Great resolution, lots of emotion, found myself teary-eyed quite a bit.

Also, I'm surprised this was published in 2017, which makes me hold out a bit of hope that Robin Hobb might write something in this setting again.

This is gonna go down as one of my favourite fantasy stories ever. Now on to my next fantasy fix.

[ChairmanPoo]

I liked the first trilogy. Felt the other two were skippable. Granted, I have not read the final book of the third one.

[MCreeper]

Around the World in Eighty Days. When i tried to read for first time, it seemed long and obtuse as all hell. Now it seems surprisingly short and funny. Go figure.

James Clavell's King Rat. About a tricky dick living a life of luxury (such as there can be) in japanese WW2 prison camp and random nonsense happening with him and around. It's really great. Probably will also read Clavell's Shogun, i stumbled on it few times before, but dismissed it as yet another pretentious nonsense without looking at author's name. I actually did read King Rat for first time when i was a kid, when I and my mother looked for phone games and somehow stumbled on phone book. Pretty much only thing i remembered was main character's sort of allegorical rat-breeding scheme. Especially the moment where jerk who they fed some rats to is being told what he actually ate. 

Tales of dark forest. By Mushroom Elves, not Steve Barlow. I have no idea if it was translated to english. Autobiographical book about a gang of ever-high savage thughs gone larpers. Mix of "people do those things?", shitty humor and okay humor, mostly the former. Despite their profane ways, thughs manage to not actually murder anyone. Or so they say. 

[Nordlicht]

I can recommend five weeks in a Balloon if you want more Verne. Just stay away from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea if you found Eighty Days long and obtuse.

[delphonso]

A book I found interesting was 1889 Nellie Bly's Around the World in 72 days, where she follows a similar path to Fogg. It is an excellent contrast to Verne. While Verne at times dips into the racist and imperialistic, Bly kicks your teeth in with very offensive observations of every non-white person she encounters. It is a tough and terrible read, but shows why Verne is relatively timeless while others of his time were not. It also casts some light on the problematic takeaways of Verne's work that probably a lot of people had at the time.