Why You Should Know about Aldous Huxley's Anthrax Bombs Today
By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for similar analyses and discussions. ** In the "Science Fiction" group on Facebook a question was posted recently about "powerful" biological weapons in sci-fi. There was a large number of responses – a total of 144 to date (as of August 24), showing that this kind of thread has considerable popularity. Yours truly also reacted, nominating Aldous Huxley's anthrax bombs there, because they are a very important example from the SF literature, with much in the way of contemporary relevance, and this makes them very "powerful" in a sense. Here's why, in a nutshell. In Brave New World (1932), Huxley gave a central role to anthrax bombs, even as he didn't speak about them at length. According to what we are told in the story, they were among the most horrible weapons of the "Nine Years War" that wrought devastation all around the globe, and their use h...