Aldous Huxley

Huxley's classic prophetic novel describes the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia devoid of individual freedom

Brave New World

Cassandra Tang

How can they? They don't know what it's like being anything else. We'd mind, of course. But then we've been differently conditioned. Besides, we start with a different heredity.

High Fidelity

Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren’t there at all.” “That’s your fault.” “Call it the fault of civilization. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

A man can smile and smile and be a villain. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain.

How can I?” he repeated meditatively. “No, the real problem is: How is it that I can’t, or ratherbecause, after all, I know quite well why I can’twhat would it be like if I could, if I were freenot enslaved by my conditioning.

It’s not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.

Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.

There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.

There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality.

But they used to take morphia and cocaine.

We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better …

There was something called democracy. As though men were more than physico-chemically equal.

You can’t learn a science unless you know what it’s all about.

Indi

‘Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?’

‘It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then I ate my own wickedness.’

‘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.’

‘Isn’t there something in living dangerously?’

‘What you need, is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.’

‘You can carry at least half your morality in a bottle. Christianity without tears- thats what soma is.’

‘Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren’t there at all.’

We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. 

‘He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.'

'A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,' said the Savage promptly.

This one stays with you. The older you get, the more you realise it isn’t just fiction, it’s a quiet warning. A world built for comfort, distraction, and pleasure… but at what cost? It makes you pause and ask: Is this the future we’re already living in?

Tanishq Khandelwal

Aldous Huxley’s most enduring masterpiece, Brave New World, presents a darkly satiric vision of a “utopian” future that has both captivated and shocked readers for generations In the far future, the utopian World State seems like the ideal society—through the use of genetic engineering, the human race has been perfected, and all citizens are well provided for. There is no violence, babies are created in laboratories, and everyone consumes daily medication to fight depression and spends their time constantly seeking bodily pleasure through “Feelies”—movies that stimulate sight, hearing and touch. Humans are bred to be completely content with their assigned roles in society. However, not everyone is satisfied with the system. In the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, Bernard Max is unhappy, feeling that something is missing from his life. Shunning the shallow pleasures of promiscuity and mindless entertainment, Bernard longs to break free. It is with this goal in mind that he plans a visit to a Savage Reservation, where the past way of life is preserved. But his visit there will prompt dangerous questions and ignite a series of events with far-reaching consequences. Originally published in 1932, Brave New World presents a chilling imagining of a future in which humans are genetically designed and constantly drugged to be happy citizens who passively serve the ruling order. In his almost prophetic work of speculative fiction, Aldous Huxley predicted much of our current technology and social practices. His powerful novel is still as relevant as ever, both as a cautionary tale of the dangers of technology and as a provocative yet entertaining read.

Maybe the most confounded I have ever been by the reputation of a "classic." 

Jacob Reader

A veces era muy difícil de leer, sin embargo muy buen libro.

Ana Paula Olvera 

Bit dry and difficult to read like Orwell's 1984 - but glad I read it. For a book written in the 30s, it touches upon some themes that exist today. 

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune

I wouldn't exactly say that I enjoyed reading this, but I can definitely understand its merits. I was really surprised by how timeless it felt and how many relatively modern concepts made it into a book from 1932.

Sivani

This was honestly a but of an uncomfortable read. I enjoyed it, but the entire concept of ‘mass production applied to biology’ throws me the fuck off from the start. Most warnings Huxley gives are still SO relevant today.

I read 1984 first, which was obviously written later, and although the themes are different, the message is the same: don’t take anything for truth because the once in charge tell you so- overall, the next time you think ‘the government wouldn’t do that’, oh yes they fucking would. 

The names were clever, the book includes some fire quotes and in most aspects there was great world building. I thought it was interesting how Huxley explored the perspective of multiple of the characters. Alongside that, the ending was strangely disappointing. All in all a great read, would recommend if you’re starting to get into the historic dystopian/ science fiction scene.

This was honestly a but of an uncomfortable read. I enjoyed it, but the entire concept of ‘mass production applied to biology’ throws me the fuck off from the start. Most warnings Huxley gives are still SO relevant today.

I read 1984 first, which was obviously written later, and although the themes are different, the message is the same: don’t take anything for truth because the once in charge tell you so- overall, the next time you think ‘the government wouldn’t do that’, oh yes they fucking would. 

The names were clever, the book includes some fire quotes and in most aspects there was great world building. I thought it was interesting how Huxley explored the perspective of multiple of the characters. Alongside that, the ending was strangely disappointing. All in all a great read, would recommend if you’re starting to get into the historic dystopian/ science fiction scene.

Terrifyingly accurate. Was slightly disappointed by the ending.

Jesper Nellemann Jakobsen

Terrifyingly accurate. Was slightly disappointed by the ending.

Michael York is an exceptional narrator.

Gwenifer

Kind of glad I reread this, but definitely disappointed with it.

This and "1984" are the big dystopia books, I've heard it said that "Brave New World" is the more realistic one and I guess I'd agree. Admittedly, Mustapha Mond really does make it seem like a paradise, even if it just makes everybody dumb cattle. You're just popping pills and having sex all the time, interrupted only to play some sports or fly helicopters. The prayer meetings are weird, but worth it. Sign me up, dude.

Mustapha Mond is probably the most interesting character, actually, and he doesn't really get enough time in the story. In fact, I'd say just about everything about "Brave New World" feels like half a story in varying ways depending on the aspect. Mustapha, for instance: the guy's very interesting and we barely see him. Despite his lengthy dialogue with The Savage which acts as a both pretty well-written and ham-fisted exposition dump, I wish I saw more. The Savage? He has potential to be interesting, but he goes from philosopher to madman in like three pages. The world, the government, "Society"? There are some writings on it but nothing much happens there, instead we focus on characters like Bernard who are just horrible. Intentionally, fine, but the guy is intolerable. Helmholtz gets the spotlight on him for a brief instant as it passes from Bernard to The Savage, the guy is basically pointless to the story (which seems like a shame). Lenina only exists to make The Savage have a cringe-inducing meltdown, one that wrecks his character's point.

I don't know, outside of a few funny moments and I suppose a pleasant nightmare for how society could be shaped to be "idyllic", this was a slog for me. I don't see myself ever picking this up again. I didn't care for it in middle school but I was just a child, right? No, apparently I was painfully precocious. Not really, this book is just sort of undeserving of its praise.

Evan

Kind of glad I reread this, but definitely disappointed with it.

This and "1984" are the big dystopia books, I've heard it said that "Brave New World" is the more realistic one and I guess I'd agree. Admittedly, Mustapha Mond really does make it seem like a paradise, even if it just makes everybody dumb cattle. You're just popping pills and having sex all the time, interrupted only to play some sports or fly helicopters. The prayer meetings are weird, but worth it. Sign me up, dude.
Mustapha Mond is probably the most interesting character, actually, and he doesn't really get enough time in the story. In fact, I'd say just about everything about "Brave New World" feels like half a story in varying ways depending on the aspect. Mustapha, for instance: the guy's very interesting and we barely see him. Despite his lengthy dialogue with The Savage which acts as a both pretty well-written and ham-fisted exposition dump, I wish I saw more. The Savage? He has potential to be interesting, but he goes from philosopher to madman in like three pages. The world, the government, "Society"? There are some writings on it but nothing much happens there, instead we focus on characters like Bernard who are just horrible. Intentionally, fine, but the guy is intolerable. Helmholtz gets the spotlight on him for a brief instant as it passes from Bernard to The Savage, the guy is basically pointless to the story (which seems like a shame). Lenina only exists to make The Savage have a cringe-inducing meltdown, one that wrecks his character's point.

I don't know, outside of a few funny moments and I suppose a pleasant nightmare for how society could be shaped to be "idyllic", this was a slog for me. I don't see myself ever picking this up again. I didn't care for it in middle school but I was just a child, right? No, apparently I was painfully precocious. Not really, this book is just sort of undeserving of its praise.

I do not recommend "Brave New World".

Diction and themes feel like it could be written today. 

Shohini Gupta

  Celebrul roman Minunata lume noua porneste de la ideea unei societati distopice care, pentru a‑si controla cetatenii, recurge la orice subterfugiu: de la transformarea rasei umane si manipularea ei genetica, pina la mascarea minciunii in adevar absolut. Rezultatul este o combinatie de realitati orwelliene si scene din cel mai pur SF, in care cartile sint arse si singura cultura acceptata sint preceptele unui conducator megaloman, in care aparitia unei editii de Opere complete de William Shakespeare poate duce la rasturnarea unui regim absurd, in care oamenii sint conceputi in imense incuba­toare, iar cei neatinsi inca de morbul acestei „civilizatii“ sint izolati in rezervatii.

Minunata lume nouă

Alexandra 

I-am dat 4 stele, deși am ținut cont de faptul că e scrisă în anii 30, altfel i-as fi dat mai puțin. A fost usor de citit și m-a prins din primele pagini, dar nu m-am atașat de niciun personaj, “mesajul” nu m-a impresionat deloc, iar personajele și povestea în sine au fost lipsite de complexitatea la care mă așteptam. Lumea distopică descrisă a fost destul de interesantă. 
 Nu o să o recitesc niciodată, dar poate o să o recomand cuiva cândva.

Patrick Book

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order—all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. 

Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as a thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites. 

Vince Hilahan

brave new world revisited included after the book reeled back in all my interest after reading it 

W copy tbh

lala

Finished this book last month but haven’t gotten around the chance to write the review. For a book from the 1930s it explores topic that are still relevant to this day. Reading this reminds me of Divergent or Hunger Games where people are split into different categories depending on their strong suits. I’d like to say that this is the Ur-dystopian social science fiction novel. What’s more interesting for me is the use of genetic engineering to guarantee that everyone in the society has a function that benefits the other; they are then conditioned to never regret their positions in society. Except for Bernard Marx, who find life within the stability in the society boring. He refuse to take the recreational drug, soma, which can make all your troubles go away in a soma vacation. We then see how his story unfolds. The peak of the novel is where Marx brings two savages or people who are not conditioned to the society from the Savage Reservation. Overall i think it was a pretty interesting read, but not one that I particularly enjoy very much. I think the message the book is trying to say is too on-the-nose. But if you like dystopian novels maybe this is your cup of tea.

Huxley's classic prophetic novel describes the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia devoid of individual freedom.

Reiza H

Would you rather have cheap but fast entertainment that gives you instant joy, or some hard process but gives your life meaning?

In a world where there's no sadness and suffering, consumed by wonder drugs, instant gratification, physical engineering and sexual entertainments where there's no need to be physically and emotionally attached to someone else, could there be a meaning of life in a world like that? 

This book obviously goes deeper than that. However, for me, the main theme of the book is about having the meaning of life. In a life scored simply by effectivity and efficiency, how does someone gets a genuine and real meaning of their life? 

Of course, this book does not offer a solution, it offers a glimpse of an alternative, utopian world where everybody belongs to everyone else, where everybody could be happy instantly. It asks you a question, to make you think and reflects: It does sound like a weird, creepy world to live in. 

Where is God? Where is religion? If there aren't one, could we choose to be ignorant and do whatever we want? After all, people in this utopian world doesn't even bother to find out. They only care about stability, about their hunger for more happiness, about their needs, about their instant satisfaction. They don't care to give life meaning to themselves.

What is freedom after all? Is freedom means to do whatever we want? Or it is to do something that we found really necessary to fulfil our needs, dreams, and hopes? Of course in this world, freedom means claiming the right to be unhappy, and what a serious statement is that.

'But I like the inconveniences.' 
'We don't,' said the Controller. 'We prefer to do things comfortably.'

What will you choose?

Hanna Rybchynska

I liked this book! I am a big fan of science fiction and this one is a classic. It has an amazing world development however the story isn't really long nor special.

In this world, the industrial revolution took a big step into human evolution, also technology is more important than emotions and reproduction. Humans are all made artificially and society gives them a classification accordingly to their job status. 

This book has a lot of interesting ethical questions and shows a world really similar to ours with some twists.

Get past the “gleep-glorp” sci-fi technobabble and there is some interesting bits and pieces. Interesting meditations on fake friends and what could be considered prescient stuff about reality tv celebrity (prodding mentally unwell people to be entertained by their reaction which only makes more people want to prod them which only further disregulates them), but as dystopian fiction it stinks. Authors getting twisted out of shape by imagining a world where people would rather watch tv or movies than read books always makes for lousy books. The greatest book of all time (Don Quixote) is about how books suck and people who take them seriously are deranged nut jobs, ruminate on that Aldous!

Dan Dugan

(Minor spoilers) 

This book is about two things: individuality and civilisation.

The characters are all caricatures of what it means to possess social individuality. In broader terms, to be different to those around you. 

Bernard is different because he’s on the bottom rung of his caste, a rung that no one knew existed until he showed up. He is rejected because his individualised traits do not cohere with the rest of the caste that a part of. 

Helmholtz’s difference is his superiority, an ubermensch amongst the elite. He’s above everyone else. For Helmholtz, success is trivial, women are trivial, life is trivial; his place in society means little to him and so he has become aloof, rejecting comformity to his caste in favour of radical misbehaviour. 

John is different because he has no caste at all. He’s and outsider to almost everyone’s social circle, a true pariah. He’s too white and civilised to be an Indian yet too emotional and unstable to be considered civilian. That same civilisation then took his mother from him, poisoned his moral purity and, in the end, refused to let him escape its grasp. 

Lenina, in fact, has no individuality at all. She is the perfect Alpha - beautiful, brainless, adamant in her pursuit of orthodoxy. Her suffering arises when John forces individuality upon her through his exclusive infatuation of her – and then rejects her scripted advances, undermining the stability upon which her conditioning rests. It is through Lenina that we glimpse the dire consequence of removing individuality in favour of stability, pruning the autoimmunity that individuality gives. 

Mustapha Mond parenthetically tells us that difference is suffering. Ironically, Mond is perhaps the most individualistic person in the book, and paradoxically its happiest. Why? Because Mond isn’t actually different; because he is his own caste, his own comparison, his own society. He reads what he likes, dictates what he likes, declares his own morality – by his own admittance, he makes the rules. In a sense, he is beyond society. 

The illustration Aldous Huxley has painted for us is one of status anxiety, a critical feature of our modern world. It is what drives consumerism. It is what makes us jealous and angry at the success of others, and ashamed of our own failures. But what is failure without a comparison to success? Alain de Botton’s  Status Anxiety deals with this topic better than I ever could. 

In 1930, Aldous Huxley would have been aware of the rise of communism and the future it could promise. This book is in many ways a critique of that communism. The Brave New World is pointedly similar to how many people at the time described the ultimate outcome of successful communism – both the detractors and pundits; utopia and dystopia. Everything is easy, everyone is happy; to each what they need, with needs regulated closely. What Huxley truly felt about communism is best illustrated in the Cyprus experiment, perhaps. 

Is this book really dystopian, or is it utopian? What would Bentham have to say about the satisfied Alpha-Socrates, alongside the satisfied Gamma-Pigs? 

In 2019, a lot of the world that Huxley envisioned seems right around the corner. Designer babies, powerful escapist drugs made ubiquitous, paternalistic governments, insatiable consumerism…the list goes on. But the real lesson on offer in this book has been seemingly ignored: do we really want a world where individualism and its instability, its sturm-und-drang and emotional labour, has been replaced with happiness, easiness, and perhaps most jarringly of all, equality?

The book is a classic, and it is a great book. Helps you understand how world runs. The only thing that I didn't like about the book is that during a chapter (especially in the early chapters) context switches happen a lot which can be hard to follow if you're not super focused. 

Khalid B

jack

thought this would be another classic in the same vein as Fahrenheit that i would be relatively disappointed with. luckily that was not the case at all. this kicks soooo much ass, i’m glad i finally got to full this gap in my Essential Reading

Shalini Basu

meh. creative concept but took me a while

lucy p

Farah Aisha Shabrina

it’s so eerie how the book blatantly reflects the irony of today’s society.. with a little imaginary yet familiar (to modern reality) twist, of course

y✦

✦ deciding ur dystopia would be a sad-free zone ft. magic pills is one way to hellscape
✦ 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘢 sounds like the cure to all my problems

Brave New World

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