From a global conflict to a growingly dishonest political culture to the rise of Big Pharma; it’s fair to say that we live in troubling times. But for George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, these issues were foreseeable. In this article, Dr Emrah Atasoy compares the seminal works of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, and explores how we can use fiction as a guide to help identify and overcome the issues within reality.