In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I remember a discussion question from somewhere at least 50 years ago that went something like this: "Which of the two British dystopian novels, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, seems most prescient of current conditions to you? Explain." I thought this was a good question at the time, but I never could come up with a definite answer, and as I revisit the question today, I'm actually more convinced that the answer is "neither". Let's look at Brave New World. According to Wikipedia , Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Nineteen Eighty-Four , on the other han...