The Alpha caste consists of those destined for leadership positions, with Betas filling professional and administrative posts requiring higher education, but without the leadership responsibilities of the Alphas. The three lower castes are manufactured in groups of up to 96 clones, and they are chemically stunted and/or deprived of oxygen during their maturation process to control their intelligence level and physical development. Children are engineered in fertility clinics and artificially gestated. In this society, people are 'decanted' into a chemically-enforced and totally conformist caste society. Instead, humans are grown in factories according to industrial quotas. There are no families, and no-one is born in a natural way. His famous phrase 'History is bunk' has become the fundamental approach to studying the past - as a result, no-one knows of past societies. The assembly line process is present in many aspects of life, and the symbol 'T' has replaced the Christian cross, a reflection of the Model T car developed by Henry Ford. The word lord has been replaced with ford. The new society is built around the principles of Henry Ford, and many aspects of life reflect this. History is forbidden, and only the World Controllers know how the present society was created and what life was like before it. Following the devastating Nine Years' War (said to have begun in the 1940s), the entire planet has been united into the One World State, governed by ten 'World Controllers'. the 27th century), the story describes a society whose motto is 'Community, Identity, Stability'.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Classes in brave new world