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Originally published in 1932, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before. Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media—has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 AF (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.
A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, Brave New World is both a warning to be heeded and thought-provoking yet satisfying entertainment.
zasmine: For Orwell was inspired by it. And Orwell's 1984 is as much of a prize as it.
li33ieg: 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451: 3 essential titles that remind us of the need to keep our individual souls pure.
Ludi_Ling: Really, the one cannot be mentioned without the other. Actually, apart from the dystopian subject matter, they are very different stories, but serve as a great counterpoint to one another.
Anonymous user: It's essential to read Huxley's and Orwell's books together. Both present the ultimate version of the totalitarian state, but there the similarities end. While Orwell argues in favour of hate and fear, Huxley suggests that pleasure and drugs would be far more effective as controlling forces. Who was the more prescient prophet? That's what every reader should decide for him- or herself.… (more)
artturnerjr: If you read only one other dystopian SF story, make it this one (well, you should read 1984, too, but you knew that already, didn't you?).
leigonj: Haldane's ideas of eugenics and ectogenesis, which are laid out alongside others including world government and psychoactive drugs, strongly influenced Huxley's novel.
This is one of those books that I felt like I should have read, as an English major & teacher, but hadn't.
It was good, certainly ground-breaking at the time, and definitely worth the two nights it took me to read. So much has been written about this novel that I have nothing new to say. ( )
I like a good dystopian story, and this is one of the older ones which I had never read. I wouldn't say it's "fun" to read, but I'm glad to have read it, it's as relevant as ever. ( )
First read this when I was about 14, and all these years later I only remembered the babies in bottles and the soma. I wonder how much I really understood back then? Probably not much, because wow, what a damning statement of civilization. I used to worry about Orwell's 1984 coming true, but it seems Huxley's vision is the one driving the world these days. Terrifying! ( )
Brave New World is certainly strange and uncomfortable in many ways, and can thus be hard to truly grasp and appreciate, but it proposes such a unique and interesting iteration of the dystopian society that it is hard not to be enthralled by it. The book presents the reader with a world that, while twisted and oppressive, appears utopian in nature; its citizens are happy, many diseases have been eradicated, everybody serves a purpose and feels fulfilled by their work, and technology has reached a point of incredible advancement. In a similar manner to books like The Giver, Brave New World subverts that perception of its setting as utopian by gradually exposing its flaws through the musings of rebellious characters like Bernard Marx and the presence of the Savage Reservations, in which life possesses more meaning not just in spite of but because it fails to mimic the perfection of modern society. What I find most interesting about Brave New World is how, even as it begins to portray society as more dystopian than it is utopian, it still manages to leave the reader feeling that the lives of those living in said dystopia might not really be that bad, and that the superficial quality of happiness in society does not matter when it means that the vast majority of citizens feel satisfied, even if that satisfaction is somewhat hollow. Brave New World raises many interesting questions about what it means to truly be fulfilled and find contentment in life, and whether or not natural evils, like disease and hunger, make the best parts of life feel more resonant or meaningful. It is a fascinating book and a classic for a reason, and it's easy to recommend to those who enjoy reading dystopian or science fiction novels. ( )
"Brave New World" was definitely worth listening to! It was an interesting dystopian classic with themes that one can still ponder today.
One entertaining aspect of listening to this novel on audio Brave New World is to picture what other commuters or walkers might think when they overhear a few of the weird social norms of Huxley's book. What would they think if they heard "soma" and "feelies" in the same sentence on the bus or train with you?...................
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.
Quotations
Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.
..."What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
"I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin ... I'm claiming the right to be unhappy". "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." ... "I claim them all".
"All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny."
"No civilisation without social stability. No social stability without individual stability."
Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those unnecessary old barriers.
The social body persists although the component cells may change.
It was the sort of idea that might make the higher castes believe that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.
The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get.
Science is dangerous. It must be chained and muffled.
People believe in God because they have been conditioned to believe.
But everyone belongs to everyone else.
Some men are almost rhinoceroses; they ron’t respond properly to conditioning. (Henry)
I’d rather be unhappy than have the false, lying happiness you were having here.
Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science.
But truth’s a menace, science is a public danger.
He would have liked to speak, but there were no words.
But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin...
I’m claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.
Originally published in 1932, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before. Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media—has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 AF (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.
A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, Brave New World is both a warning to be heeded and thought-provoking yet satisfying entertainment.
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Book description
Huxley's bleak future prophesized, in Brave New World was a capitalist civilization, which had been reconstituted through scientific and psychological engineering, a world in which people are genetically designed to be passive and useful to the ruling class. Huxley opens the book by allowing the reader to eavesdrop on the tour of the Fertilizing Room of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning center, where the high tech reproduction takes place. Bernard Marx (one of the characters in the story) seems alone, harboring an ill-defined longing to break free. Satirical and disturbing, Brave New World is set some 600 years into the future. Reproduction is controlled through genetic engineering, and people are bred into a rigid class system. As they mature, they are conditioned to be happy with the roles that society has created for them. Concepts such as family, freedom, love, and culture are considered grotesque.
Haiku summary
Legacy Library: Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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It was good, certainly ground-breaking at the time, and definitely worth the two nights it took me to read. So much has been written about this novel that I have nothing new to say. (