brave new world

From the title of Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World, itself a reference to a line from The Tempest (1610), see quotations.

brave new world (plural brave new worlds)

1. A better, often utopian (future) world.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 17:

     O wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there heere? / How beauteous mankinde is? O braue new world / That has ſuch people in't.

   • 1999, Helen Kelly-Holmes, European Television Discourse in Transition‎, →ISBN, page 6:

     Will digital broadcasting, 'mega-channel-land', change everything or nothing? Will it be a brave new world, or simply more of the same?

2. A terrible, often oppressive or dystopian world.
   • 2005, Will Watson, “The Ethics of Living American Primacy”, in Allan Eickelman et al., editor, Justice and Violence: Political Violence, Pacifism and Cultural Transformation‎, →ISBN, page 103:

     In this brave new world, the IMF and other Western financial institutions dictated radical free trade "shock treatment" to both developing nations and the former USSR ...