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Table of Contents | Printable Version | Barron's Booknotes SPECIALIZED VOCABULARY FOR THE NOVEL Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons: the caste hierarchy in Utopia. Anthrax Bomb: a Pre-Ford weapon used in germ warfare. Bokanovsky Process: a process by which a human egg has its normal development arrested. It starts to bud and produces many identical eggs. Bottling: the stage where artificially created embryos are put into sowperitoneum-lined bottles for maturation. Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy: an intricate ball game played with complicated equipment. Community Sing: a pseudo-religious meeting for the lower castes, promoting fraternity. Decanting: the process by which Utopian embryos are removed from the bottles after maturation. Ectogenesis: birth outside the human body. Emotional Engineering: the profession responsible for preparing propagandistic diversions for the people. Erotic Play: a pastime for Utopian children, involving exploration of each other's bodies and meant to absolve all feelings of guilt associated with sex. Five Step: a popular Utopian dance. Ford: the Utopian idol, the nearest equivalent to God. Freemartin: a sterilized Utopian woman.
Hypnop'dia: sleep-teaching to inculcate prejudices into the subconscious of the sleeper. Internal and External Secretion Trust: this utopian organization is in charge of hormones and extracts to keep the people young and happy. Liners and Matriculators: people who work in the Bottling Room. Malthusian Belt: a device worn to discourage sex in the unsterilized women to avoid pregnancy. Malthusian Drill: another device meant for the unsterilized women to avoid pregnancy. Orgy-Porgy: a ritual where indiscriminate, en masse sexual relations ensure solidarity in the participants. Podsnap's Technique: a process resulting in speeding up the ripening of embryos artificially. Power Elite: an exclusive and restricted group which exercises power by forceful means. Pregnancy Substitute: this medical procedure allows utopian women to experience the psychological benefits of childbirth without actually undergoing it. Scent and Color Organ: a console that plays concertos of fragrant aromas and capriccios of colored lights. Sex-hormone Chewing Gum: an artificial means of gaining sexual satisfaction Social Predestination: a process by which a card file of data on every Utopian is preserved to establish a quota system for those types of persons the state intends to create. Solidarity Service: a pseudo-religious gathering to promote fraternity among the upper castes. Soma: a drug that dulls the passions and understandings of the people and creates a false sense of happiness. It is frequently consumed to escape reality, mainly in the form of tablets. For the state, it serves as a tool of preserving social stability. Subliminal Projection: an image presented to the sight or words to the hearing for split seconds and super-imposed upon visual or aural entertainment. This split-second communication lodges in the subconscious and greatly influences subsequent behavior. Super-Vox-Wurlitzerians: a synthetic-music box. T-Model: the Utopian equivalent of a religious symbol, meant to be a play upon the Christian cross; it honors Ford, the founder of this utopian society and alludes to Henry Ford and the mode-T. Violent Passion Surrogate (V.P.S.): a chemical intended to give the body the psychological experience of having had normal sexual relations. Voice of Good Feeling: the artificial voice that suppresses any riot by soothing the people with suggestions of peace through loudspeakers. Will-to-Order: the drive in human beings that compels them to forge unity out of diversity to the extent of over-organizing things. Table of Contents | Printable Version | Barron's Booknotes |