Blind Faith

I finally got round to finishing Ben Elton's Blind Faith this week. I've read a few of Ben Elton's books. Many of them are futuristic dystopian satires which appeal to me as a more accessible version of Anthony Burgess or Aldous Huxley. I actually asked him, at a book signing, whether these writers had been an influence on him but he said that he didn't care much for science fiction and that P G Wodehouse was his biggest literary influence. This actually makes some sense, although I think that Blind Faith has more in common with Huxley's Brave New World or Orwell's 1984 than the world of Bertie Wooster.

Blind Faith takes place in a society in which science has been rejected in place of all manner of mumbo-jumbo. There is the "Faith" - not a religion, as such, so much as a combination of New Age bollocks, internet pseudo-science and wanton consumerism. Add to this a society in which privacy is frowned upon and nosey parker neighbours are the new Big Brother. Ben Elton always seems to be on the spot reflecting the cultural Zeitgeist and picking up on social trends and this is evident here what with the rise of Facebook and overly personal blogs and Twitter feeds (I suppose this blog fits in there somewhere). This habit of being on the ball topically also rather dates some of his older material. However, in Blind Faith he really throws everything including the kitchen sink into the mix and actually dilutes one of the more interesting central themes from the story.

This futuristic society, which has rejected science, has also rejected one of it's greatest achievements: vaccination. This is the most interesting aspect of the book; imagining the effect on society that rampant preventable disease would have both on the death rate and birth rate; social expectations are altered and life becomes cheap. Would this be the inevitable conclusion if the rantings of the anti-vaccination movement were to become mainstream? I'm not sure and, ultimately, Ben Elton doesn't explore this in any great depth. It's a pity, because it could be the making of one of the great dystopian novels.

Overall, I enjoyed Blind Faith. It's more airport lounge fodder than high literature but he has an engaging and entertaining way of telling a story. However, I don't think it's Ben Elton's best story by a long shot and it lacks the biting wit of his usual work whilst missing the chance of exploring the one of the more important current topical subjects.