Product Description

Human beings, graded from intellectuals to manual workers, hatched from incubators and brought up in communal nurseries, learn by conditioning to accept their social destiny. The story develops around an unorthodox AlphaPlus, who visits a New Mexican Reservation and brings a savage back to London.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #864106 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-16
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 7
• Binding: Audio CD

Review
'A brilliant tour de force, Brave New World may be read as a grave warning of the pitfalls that await uncontrolled scientific advance.' Observer 'Equally a denunciation of capitalism and communism, so far as they discourage man from thinking freely, Brave New World is one of the most important books to have been published since the war.' Daily Telelgraph 'Such ingenious wit, derisive logic and swiftness of expression, Huxley's resources of sardonic invention have never been more brilliantly displayed.' The Times

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

About the Author
Aldous Huxley was born on 26th July 1894 near Godalming, Surrey. He began writing poetry and short stories in his early twenties, 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. 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 famous account of his first mescalin experience, The Doors of Perception, 1954. Huxley died in California on 22nd November 1963.

Customer Reviews

Huxley was a great mind.
After years of hearing people refer to Brave New World - both online and in real life - I decided to read it myself and find out just what all the commotion was about. Having done so, I will share my thoughts with you.

The story is set in a future society where humans are no longer born but instead grown from embryos in huge research labs. Years of trial and error has resulted in scientists being able to produce up to 15,000 individuals from a single embryo - all of which end up being twins. Immediately they are conditioned to think and feel and act in certain ways which make society what it should be - happy, stable, strong, and united. As they sleep they are played voice recordings which, to cut a long story short, programme them into what society wants them to be. One of the many recordings being "Everyone belongs to everyone else".

In a time when humans are made in batches, pyshcologically conditioned, mentally and physically matured in a fraction of the natural time, encouraged to participate in 'errotic play' from a young age, given 'soma' (a recreational drug) to cure lows, taught to throw out old/dirty/torn clothes and buy new ones, sheltered from dirt and disease, prevented from ever becoming pregnant, told that everyone belongs to everyone else (in effect everyone has sex with everyone without thinking twice as from a young age this is taught to be perfectly natural), given medicine so that you physically look like a 20 year old all your life until around the age of 50 when you drop dead, after hearing all this you are left with many questions. Questions like 'How could it ever work?', 'What would a society of clones be like?', 'Why on earth did they do it in the first place?', and 'Is everyone truly happy?'. Well, this book answers all these questions and many more, all the while introducing you to ideas you may never have come accross or thought too ridiculous to ponder over.

Furthermore, what would happen if someone from the 'old world' was given a chance to see this society? Would they accept the offer? What would they think of being called a 'Savage' just because they were born into a family with a mother and father, just because they weren't conditioned, just because they wasted their time reading books, just because they showed an emotion called love, just because they were like you and me.

Brave New World is one of the most fascinating books you will ever read and Huxley must've had a great mind to write such a masterpiece - and all in 230 pages.

"When the individual feels, the community reels"
I read this book shortly after reading 1984 - having heard them being compared - and it definitely provided a good contrast. While Orwell's vision is dark, gloomy, filled with hate and despair, Huxley's world could almost be seen as a Utopian fantasy.

There is an overwhelming sense of comfort and "happiness" within society that is brought about through two important things: recreational drugs and psychological conditioning. Death, relationships, class differences and work do not provide worry. This is in fact what makes Huxley's work so brilliant: it portrays a Dystopia that operates so perfectly that it is disquieting rather than frightening. Because society does indeed work for the good of everyone in a hedonistic sense, the logic behind the system can only be challenged by pure human instinct, as voiced by the central character in the book: "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."

However, although the book brings up excellent questions regarding totalitarianism, and freedom of thought, it is somewhat lacking in story. The characters are very hard to empathise with and although the book starts with a central character, Bernard Marx, the focus shifts then to John ("the Savage"), leaving you with a sense that the novel is written for description rather than story-telling. The reader is able to get a very good mental grasp on the problems within society, but since the story isn't gripping, you finish the book feeling very detached from the characters and the world they live in.

Stunning and unsettling
To start out, this book is incredible and an example of fiction working at the level of George Orwell's 1984 and just as stunning a piece of social/political fiction. Set in a future where the world as we know it has changed, where social divisions exist by design to support the stability of the society. People are genetically engineered depending on their role in society, society itself controlled by pre-birth engineering and mood-controlling drugs.

Huxley has written with such great thought and power that the descriptions run like a melody and I found myself in several cases loosing touch of how much time I had spent reading. Just like 1984 it is powerful because the dystopia is one that is easy to imagine.

The novel works on many levels, which explains why it is a widely studied book for Literature students and why there are so many essays and supporting texts relating to it. Either way this certainly is a book that inspires thought, as well as probably one of the most compelling books I have ever read.