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13-JAN-2025 | Excerpt from “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

Author

Dan Bogachek
January 13, 2025

Excerpt from “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables. 🏁

  • “A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories” — subversion of expectations with oxymoron. Also on this note: focus on handing your reader one idea or image at a time, not on writing “correctly.” Complete ideas >> complete sentences.

  • Lack of quotes around titles and dialogue — Stephen King also uses this.

  • So much focus on the senses:

    • Visual, color & lighting (grey, white, yellow, “a harsh thin light glared through the windows”, “the light was frozen…”)

    • Climate/temperature (wintriness, tropical heat)

    • Materials (glass, nickel, porcelain, rubber)

  • Interesting juxtaposition between sterility and death: “pallid shape of academic goose-flesh,” “corpse-coloured rubber,” “light was frozen, dead, a ghost.”

You glance at your watch.

It’s 6:28. You’ve been at it since 3.
Crap. Your hot date is at 7. Running late. Sink shower it is.
Nowhere close to done editing…

“…at least all the ideas are laid out, so there’s that. Did I miss anything? I don’t think so? Ok, but how do I make it flow? I need to get the final draft to Stacey for design asap, team cutoff is at noon Thursday…”

You’ve spent dinner completely distracted. Your date just took off. You go home exhausted, plod to your desk, and flip open the laptop.

Or… what if:

5:41 — you’re out of the shower and lip-syncing.
6:17 — dressed to the nines and zenned out.
7:03 — the sunset glints off your aviators as you smile hello.
8:36 — it actually feels like you’re hitting it off. Not just hot, funny to boot.
Next morning, 9:27 — final draft ready in your inbox.
10:31 — Stacey messages back, “thanks, looks good!”

The difference?

Copygloss handled it. Before you left for the date, actually.

For help with editing, email Dan:
[email protected].