Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

Dec 2008 · Random House

About this ebook

Brave New World predicts - with eerie clarity - a terrifying vision of the future. Read the dystopian classic.

EVERYONE BELONGS TO EVERYONE ELSE

Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs.

You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills.

Discover the brave new world of Aldous Huxley's classic novel, written in 1932, which prophesied a society which expects maximum pleasure and accepts complete surveillance - no matter what the cost.

'A masterpiece of speculation... As vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it' Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale

'A grave warning... Provoking, stimulating, shocking and dazzling' Observer

**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Ratings and reviews

Aldous Huxley’s Brave new world is probably lesser known but is equal to, and in some respects, even more on point than Orwell’s 1984. Both are set in a totalitarian future, where your actions are controlled and your way of life is set boundaries. A Brave New World is less ‘in your face’ terrifying than 1984 but is perhaps even more chilling as a result. It goes deep into the conditioning of the different classes and how they are created without a mother or father. I think this is an accurate description of where Western society might be headed, though this is far more radical. In modern day society people are ‘conditioned’ by what they see on the television and what they read in magazines and books. The justification for this conditioning is striving for happiness, where no one is ever lonely, sad or bored. There is always something to do, though none of it may be undertaken alone. There is a scene in particular where one of the World Controllers, a man who decides the future has a conversation with the Savage (a man who has not lived in the civilization and has not gone through the long conditioning process). He talks about losing truth, beauty and real feelings in order for ever

'Brave New World' expresses some important ideas, and for that reason it's an interesting book. It is not, however, a good book. The writing is somewhat too dramatic, and the characters are unsympathetic - simply vessels for the encapsulation and decanting of a particular idea. Perhaps this is a conscious reflection of the way humans are manufactured in Huxley's brave new world - predestined to a particular role in life, and unable and unwilling to escape from it. All things considered I would recommend the book despite its flaws.

When you can compare our modern day lifestyle with the civilised one in the book you will find so many similarities. From taking whoever you like to taking soma to numb the pain, from the differences between the savage and the civilised to their peculiar interest in the savage's activities as a form of entertainment just because they have never seen anything like this b4. Since in our present age we are already familiar with the many ideas in this book, its imp to note how old it is. Prophetic.

About the author

Aldous Huxley was born on 26 July 1894 near Godalming, Surrey. He began writing poetry and short stories in his early 20s, but it was his first novel, Crome Yellow (1921), which established his literary reputation. This was swiftly followed by Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928) – bright, brilliant satires in which Huxley wittily but ruthlessly passed judgement on the shortcomings of contemporary society. For most of the 1920s Huxley lived in Italy and an account of his experiences there can be found in Along the Road (1925). The great novels of ideas, including his most famous work Brave New World (published in 1932 this warned against the dehumanising aspects of scientific and material 'progress') and the pacifist novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) were accompanied by a series of wise and brilliant essays, collected in volume form under titles such as Music at Night (1931) and Ends and Means (1937). In 1937, at the height of his fame, Huxley left Europe to live in California, working for a time as a screenwriter in Hollywood. As the West braced itself for war, Huxley came increasingly to believe that the key to solving the world's problems lay in changing the individual through mystical enlightenment. The exploration of the inner life through mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs was to dominate his work for the rest of his life. His beliefs found expression in both fiction (Time Must Have a Stop,1944, and Island, 1962) and non-fiction (The Perennial Philosophy, 1945; Grey Eminence, 1941; and the account of his first mescalin experience, The Doors of Perception, 1954. Huxley died in California on 22 November 1963.