8. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Brave New World is like the other half to 1984 in the sense that it is one of the archetypal Classics with a capital C. It was written in 1931 and was primarily concerned with the issue of humanity adapting to science, rather than science adapting to humanity. One of the most strikingly prescient themes, almost a century later, is the fear that Huxley appeared to have for disposable consumer culture. The citizens of this new England learn the slogans "ending is better than mending" and "more stitches less riches" encouraging a culture that discards anything with the smallest fault which draws uneasy comparisons to our own world. Not only that, but the novel concerns itself with reversed notions of the merits of public and private. If something happens in private, it is essentially judged as to have not happened, and what's the point in that? Everybody must know everybody's business in order for it to have any worth. In our current culture of sharing every little detail of our mundane lives (I told Twitter I was eating cheese the other day), seeing it predicted in a book written so long ago is jarring, and makes it all the more relevant to the modern reader.