Cheap Brave New World (Book) (Aldous Huxley) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Brave New World

Scifi? Drama? Political Satire?-whatever, it's great!
Aldous Huxley has concocted the most abstract, encompassing, and somewhat frightening novel about a possible and plausible future destination the world could arrive at if it decided to follow a certain course of action. In Huxley's novel, the events that are depicted here can be determined to take place about six hundred years from now. Extreme scientific progression in the field of genetic engineering and biochemistry coupled with an apparent social retrogression into a rigid, inflexible caste system have transformed the people of the earth into a totally bizarre society which contrasts radically to today's lifestyle. One of the novel's characters, John the Savage, finds out he's analogous to a square peg in a round hole once he is removed from his indian reservation environment and transplanted into the "brave new world" of the futuristic London. John's plight illustrates the inevitable obfuscation anyone can experience if obtrusively placed in surroundings of omnipresent unfamiliarity. In consideration of the year 1932 when this novel was published, the facts that the principles of heredity were discovered by a cloistered Austrian monk a relatively few years before, and that nucleic acids would not be determined to contain the genetic "blueprints" of organisms until many years later; it's easy to see Mr. Huxley was a very erudite, perspicacious, and artful writer well ahead of his time. I am still waiting to see if a feature motion picture based on this novel will ever be produced. A little bit of trivia here: Mr. Huxley's death on November 22, 1963 went relatively unnoticed by the general public only because someone else of more prominence was assassinated that same day.

---

A gram of soma a day...
Soma, feelies, scent organs...these are some of the wondrous inventions which litter the landscape of Huxley's ultra-happy dystopia. From the opening scene where we watch babies being farmed instead of born this book creates a world where science and logic have wiped out individual inspiration and such petty things as love, poetry and Shakespeare. This novel is a terrific read for it's ability to create a horrible world, and yet make it seem not so bad. This is the real power of the book. While the world of 1984 is obviously a nightmare, the world of Brave New World does not seem that bad for the most part. It draws you in and makes you wonder what a movie would be like where you can feel what the actors are feeling, or what work would be like if it was always perfectly challenging and stimulating. It creates a world that you know you are not supposed to like, but which is seductive none-the-less. And this sets up the final scene in which three men argue the fate of all our lives. In which art makes a stand against easy happiness, in which love makes a stand against ignorant bliss. The last twenty pages are a tour-de-force of philosophical inquiries which makes you realize that even though you could be happy in Huxley's Brave New World, you would never be yourself. And that is the only true happiness there is.

---

The threat of "Brave New World" gone? That would be nice...
I see that some reviewers are saying the threat of a world similar to that in this novel is farther away than ever. That would be nice. Increasingly, I'm interpreting sci-fi dystopian/utopian novels not as warnings of a dire future but condemnations of a nasty present. And though this book was written in 1932, as civilization increases its messages only become more pertinent. I just finished reading this book today, and it would probably be wise to wait longer before reviewing it, but what the hell. Huxley's "brave new world" can be read as a brilliant satire of consumer society and civilization itself, in which people avoid feelings, pain, and confusion through drugs, work, and a tunnel vision that is reinforced by societal "conditioning" (though I would argue it's part of human nature as well). I was troubled by the Savage's masochistic tendencies, and confused at times as to what Huxley really thought of the Savage's over the top behavior, in the pursuit of sensation and actual feeling. Because the Savage goes so far over the top by the end, I can only assume that Huxley feels he's gone too far in the opposite direction, pursuing pain and denial simply because they are values opposed to the society he hates. Though the book is a brilliant critique, not just of society but of the way the human mind strives to shut out anything unfamiliar and uncomfortable (this is where the book's true greatness lies, I think), I'd consider deducting a star simply because it's more of an essay told in novel form than a full-fledged story. Many pages are devoted to pure description of the society, albiet cloaked in the dialogue of characters rather than in the narration, and sometimes this overshadows the characterization and story development. But the opening chapter uses an interesting, almost "cinematic" technique of "crosscutting", which can be exasperating to read but is original at least. And the characters are actually quite convincing and recognizable, especially Bernard...it's as if George Costanza from Seinfeld wound up in a future society (see Woody Allen's Sleeper). It's brimming with fantastic ideas, but I don't think it's fantastic storytelling. Nonetheless, that a minor quibble, because it's very readable and extremely insightful. Pick it up right away. 5/6