Cutting dystopian vision of future popular culture
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Elton's 'Blind Faith' stands out from other dystopian satire for the strong social and cultural analysis that underpins this all-too-familiar future world. 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, while of course brilliant and enduring, were about the totalitarian politics and technological suprematism of the time when they were written, and Elton has recognised that, 50+ years on, enough has changed in our society that our dystopias, our nightmares must be updated too. Structurally it's a re-write of Orwell's '1984', to be sure, but the interest in this book is not about such literary connections but rather what Elton is saying about today's society.
While his story-telling is pretty crude and unsubtle (characters are ciphers rather more than they are people), this does at least fit with what Elton is seeking to criticise about today's society. Current cultural trends of sex-obsession, ego-centric 'self-help' thinking, and fear of difference are mercilessly exaggerated for savagely comic effect. It all hangs together into an entertaining and thought-provoking story that's well-paced and fluently written. Ironically enough, compared to Orwell, it is Elton's cynicism about the lower classes that make 'Blind Faith' very contemporary - and also open scope for criticism about the author's own prejudices. How things have changed in both culture and politics over the last fifty years...
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More Enjoyable than You Might Expect
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I thought in recent novels that Ben Elton has gone off the boil somewhat, so I was pleasantly surprised to find another biting satire on life and the universe.
Mind you getting through the jacket blurb as a bit like wading through porridge. "Ben Elton's dark, savagely comic novel imagines a post-apocalyptic society" and that's enough to put you off for starters. My initial thought was "oh no not another 1984 rip off."
Thankfully Elton stretched the bounds of 1984 with some delicious black humour and a wicked ending that brings no real surprises but certainly makes you think about inclusive and exclusive societies. Basically Elton's world occurs after the second great flood when the world (and in this case London) is celebrity and sexually obsessive - so much so that a decree goes out that everyone is famous. It is very much a 21st century view of the future.
The central character doesn't want to conform and sets out to find like minds - people who can think for themselves as opposed to the current Big Brother generation of vacuous me generation self obsessed youngsters.
We meet Cassius who is employed simply to keep up the government's targets for eliminating age discrimination Then Elton has the following to say about the internet "The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance."
In Elton's grave new world virtually everything that happens to a citizen is shared with everyone else through blogs, vids and other electronic means. Nothing is secret. But of course underneath it all lurks squalor and corruption. The thirst for knowledge backfires. And really anybody who uses the internet could be already part of this frightening concept (myself included).
This book is an enjoyable vision of a strange world that hopefully will never exist but at least it's more entertaining than the usual apocalypse fodder from authors that take themselves far too seriously.
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Weird and slightly perverse!
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I read this book on a plane and if it hadn't been for the boredom that flying conjurs up, I would have put it in the nearest bin! But my boredom got the better of me, so I kept reading and finished this book. Some of Elton's ideas on our future could certainly hold true, but some of this book was very weird and definitely quite perverted. He just takes things too far in this book and it could have been brilliant...but it really wasn't!
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Not so much an Orwell rip-off as a knowing wink
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Unless you're one of the ignoramuses that this novel satirises, you'll at least know about 1984. Ben Elton expects you to. He just uses our familiarity with that novel's famous set pieces to make his point. And let's not forget that 1984 itself was a satire on post-war Britain (it was originally called 1948).
Orwell presented a soul-destroying vision of how totalitarianism destroys the indivual. Here individualism is destroying society. Everybody is self-obsessed and must share their every thought in online blogs. It's not quite the complete chavication of the UK (I'm not sure your hardcore chavs could write anything) but it certainly pinpoints our very British horror at why those awful people on Jeremy Kyle's show would want to wash their dirty linen in public.
Maybe this alone would have been enough for one novel, but we also have a corrupt theocracy in power - complete with blandly meaningless pronouncements about The Love. I particularly enjoyed the concerts where if everybody cheered loud enough, the evils of the world would go away (Make Poverty History, anyone?). At a time when superstitious nonsense appears to be gathering strength instead of wilting in the brightness of scientific discoveries, it is chillingly prophetic. This is what happens when people stop feeding their minds and indulge their selfish whims instead.
Despite these positives, the twists are too telegraphed and the messianic ending a little too heavy-handed. But overall, it's a funny little (im)morality tale that might get younger people thinking about where we're heading.
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Blind faith - ironic?
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This book started off brilliantly and had me captivated. Unfortunately, Ben then tries to claim that a belief in Darwinian evolution is science on a par with vaccination, physics and modern medicine. The characters talk about reason and logic, yet miss the irony that they have blind faith in evolution.
They never question what caused the Big Bang, how life began in the alleged primordial soup, or how the vastly complex information encoded in the DNA of the simplest organism could have arisen by chance, yet they attack the logic of creation by a God.
They talk about a lack of evidence for creation yet fail to address the lack of evidence for evolution in that not a single fossil has been found of the so called missing links - every fossil discovered is animals in their full state.
The rest of what the 'Temple' believes and preaches is twaddle and nothing like Christianity, but Ben uses ridiculousness of this to discredit the belief in Creation.
The rest of the book is a brilliant satirical take on the desire for fame, collecting information and people sharing information. It's just a pity Ben made a cheap attack on something he has not researched himself, but instead just had blind faith in the unsubstantiated claims of evolution.
For those, who fervently believe in evolution, check out what the evidence for yourself and be surprised that all is not proven.
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