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Teen SRC 2020 — Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World is a captivating read that has new relevance in our ever-changing world.
A 1930s dystopia written in the midst of a far different time of crisis, the story follows a futuristic London in which industrialization has optimized everything and the happiness of society takes precedence over scientific progress and thought.
In what seems to some like a utopia, and to others a well-oiled machine, select people find themselves deviating from the principles programmed into the minds of citizens from birth.

Bernard Marx is one of these people, who unlike his peers, sees the droning and repetitive nature of these societal norms as unfulfilling. While everyone else attends social gatherings and consumes the drug Soma, Bernard seeks value and isolation in his activities.
This culminates in him visiting an isolated community following norms more like ours, where the principles of science and societal control collide as a native boy of the community leaves with him to tour the hyper-industrialized London.

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Teen SRC 2019 – Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Dayton

Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful

Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Dayton are a collection of six stories, each set further in the future than the last. Each of them tells the story of a teenager whose life are affected, in either a positive or negative way by gene-editing technology.

Each of the stories are unique and interesting, but I only enjoyed about half of them. It’s scary to imagine what life will be like in the future, and while the author has portrayed it beautifully, reading about a gentically modified boy-dolphin gave me the creeps. Also, the stories were short and abruptly having to switch between each of them interrupted the flow of the story. Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful gets a 6.5/10. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to others.