koishi rated La colmena: 4 stars
I have thought about this review many times. I have clashing emotions: how the book is (intentionally or otherwise) so up-front about racism and phrenology; how accurate it feels to read about a society that has optimized for happiness and created an artificial God in the founder of a company; but most importantly, the native americans.
I love the setting of the story, how they have machined people to be produced in a factory line and spend their entire childhood being conditioned to be peaceful. It's the kind of subtler control that one could perhaps expect totalitarianism to become before the rise of nazi Germany, and all the iconography is on point. We have chiseled social values to prevent conflict, and will happily hand you crack cocaine so you can just unwind in a hallucination.
And now, the point of this all: I get why alphas are only white. I get why John brings up Othello. I get why the feely film is about a black man and a white woman. But the part that made me think that maybe the weirdness is not as intentional as he wanted it to be is the zuñi people. It brings up an iconography that could only exist in epics about the conquest of the wild West and, later on, spaghetti westerns. It reminded me a lot of Foxfire, in how there is this certain feeling of fetishism towards the natives.
In writing this, I am realising that there may have also been intention in this. In how the narrative may be beholden from the eyes of Bernard and Lenina, how we are meant to feel about them as these precious little weirdos with their rituals and their self-flagellation. Then I think about John, how he was rejected by their tribe (except the kind elder who taught him their customs) and it was meant to be a parallel with Bernard. How we chose the white guy to be the cultured one of the bunch, not even a half-zuñi between Linda and Popá. Then I get he has to be the son of white people for the plot device to work. I feel like my brain is trying to gotcha Huxley for being weird himself instead of making the world weird, but he then smugly proves there is a point to the madness.
What do I need to say about the book, the critiques it makes, and the ending? This book has endured because of its predictions and critiques, so please, let me just talk about how this book felt like an exercise in questioning what the difference is between being weird whilst building a world and building a weird world.
