Product Description

Far in the future, the World Controllers have finally created the ideal society. In laboratories worldwide, genetic science has brought the human race to perfection. From the Alpha-Plus mandarin class to the Epsilon-Minus Semi-Morons, designed to perform menial tasks, man is bred and educated to be blissfully content with his pre-destined role.

But, in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, Bernard Marx is unhappy. Harbouring an unnatural desire for solitude, feeling only distaste for the endless pleasures of compulsory promiscuity, Bernard has an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress…

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36785 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-10
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Daily Telegraph
`one of the most important books to have been published since the war.'

The Times
`Such ingenious wit, derisive logic and swiftness of expression, Huxley's resources of sardonic invention have never been more brilliantly displayed.'

Synopsis
Written in 1932, when the Western world was poised on the brink of social and scientific revolution, this novel is Huxley's nightmare vision of the future.

Customer Reviews

God does not change. But people do
We are treated to a glimpse of a possible future world where friendship can still exist. This is a story of a hand full of individuals in a world that emphasizes "Community, Identity, Stability" that find each other and discus subjects that most of the people of that time cold not understand. However we do. Naturally the author Aldous Huxley builds his own scenarios and draws his own conclusions through the characters speeches and description of experimental history.

Bernard Marx who is about to lose his job because he is different (vary different) form those around him, decides to take a vacation to visit the Zuni's. There he meets a misplaced person named John. Together with the help of Bernard's friend Henry they intend to change the world. So they find out the world is incapable of changing.

We get an Ayn Rand type speech from Mustapha Mond one of the world controllers' that helps you realize that in this brave new world the three friends are the anomaly. How can this enigma be solved?

Do not forget to watch the 1998 movie version with Leonard Nimoy as Mustapha Mond.

Brave New World
This book is a classic and for very good reason. It has some powerful themes and is written in such a gripping way that you can't put the book down until you've finished. It doesn't have the darker, totalitarian, hyper-surveillance overtones of Orwells '1984', but gives an equally disturbing view of the future. The ideas of social conditioning and recreational drugs are especially chilling and makes you look at the world around you in a whole new light. I found the ending a touch lack lustre (hence the four stars), but the journey getting there is marvelous and will make you uncomfortable at times as you consider what life you'd prefer, the drugged easy utopia ,or the feeling savage lands. I guess that's a debate that we ask ourselves spiritually or in our everyday lives to some degree anyway, (simply getting by or feeling deeply and rocking the boat). This book is just an amplification of that. Overall a great read, with stirring themes that will play on your mind for some time to come and well worth the time taken to read it. One of those books that leaves your life richer for having read it.

Outstanding and very readable
This is a genuine classic that explores the nature of liberty and happiness and how they are not necessarily part of the same equation. The foreword of the Huxley centenary edition explains how Huxley's own ambivalence towards the vision he describes is reflected in the novel and this is borne out by a lightness of touch in the way the society is described; this is no straight down the line condemnation of miserable totalitarianism as is Orwell's 1984, the classic to which it is always compared. The society described here undoubtedly has many attractions, especially for the privileged Alpha and Beta classes. The hedonism invites comparisons to the Earth of Logan's Run rather than that of 1984, except for the absence of compulsory euthanasia in Huxley's U(Dis)topia. A wonderful novel and very easy to read.