Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a seminal science fiction novel. It’s one of the go-to texts of the dystopian sci-fi sub-genre and is often reached for as a metaphor for totalitarian societies that seek to crush individual freedom under a smothering blanket of conformity.
The novel is set in a world where social conditioning forces everyone into rigid roles. A world where the needs of society as a whole are paramount and the needs of individuals are subordinate to this. A world where any deviation from what society expects is severely punished.
Brave New World has a lot in common with Orwell’s 1984 and both novels are often mentioned in the same breath, despite being published 17 years apart. Unlike other novels about the dangers of totalitarianism, such as 1984 or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, in Huxley’s dystopia the social control is seductive and not aggressively forced on the population. Also like The Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World has had a recent high profile, big budget TV adaptation (which has since been cancelled after one season).
This fortnight, Nick and Alastair root themselves to the sofa for short sweet binges on Amazon’s Truth Seekers and Netflix’s Blood of Zeus.
Lastly, they travel back in time to sample the Blood of Zeus (23:29), a new show from the studio behind Castlevania which they will surely enjoy just as much.
This fortnight, Nick and Alastair top and tail the telly, with the opening chunk of Star Trek: Discovery season 3 and the back end of The Boys season 2.
Lastly, time for another crack at The Boys (26:21) after 
Lastly this spooky season, they float on down to Lovecraft Country (31:25) season 1, with lots of general chat about specific episodes, although surprisingly not giving away the ending.
This fortnight, Nick and Alastair take a break from talking about the devil all the time to talk about The Devil All The Time, plus the opening issue of Department of Truth.
And lastly, they’ve also read Department of Truth #1 (24:13), a new series from Image Comics by James Tynion IV, Martin Simmonds and Aditya Bidikar about conspiracy theories and the dawning horror of their reality.
And they round it off with some less wholesome (yet still very likable) investigative antics in Teenage Bounty Hunters (23:50), a silly action-comedy-drama from the producers of their beloved Orange Is The New Black. Just FYI, includes spoilers for a big midway twist from 36:44, followed by full-on ending ruiners from 40:15.
This fortnight, the streaming TV continues unabated, as Nick and Alastair get into the new season of The Boys, plus go a little more obscure with new German scifi drama Biohackers.
This fortnight, Nick and Alastair return to the Netflix well with Project Power and Transformers: War for Cybertron.
Finally, even further from reality, it’s Transformers: War For Cybertron: Chapter One: Siege (
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