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Summary: The Greatest book
Review: This is the best book i have ever read. If you like books that are like 1984 then you will love this book.
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Summary: Just as relevant now as then
Review: When I began reading it, I must admit I expected a certain datedness and heavy-handed writing style. Many literary classics, although thematically fascinating, can be ponderous. Just take a look at the intense verbosity of Victorian authors (who were paid by the word, mind you), and you'll know what I mean. Brave New World isn't like that, though. The prose is light, even airy at times, and engulfed me swiftly. It was only toward the denouement that the words became heavy, but by that time, I'd been inured to the writing style.It's quite amazing how the book is as relevant today as it was when it was written. Perhaps a couple of the futuristic devices seem quaint (and the lack of atomic energy a little odd, yet not offputting), but the science is artfully vague enough that current technology can easily fill the gaps. I can see echos of the book in all sorts of utopian literature and film: from Orwell's 1984 to Zardoz. Good job, Mr. Huxley!
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Summary: Well Written but not for me
Review: I met a friend at the library every month and we read the same book together like a small book club, so when we decided to read Brave New World I was excited because I always wanted to read this Unfortunately I was disappointed with it and I didn't enjoy this at all, and had I not made a commitment to reading the book I most likely would have not finished it. I did feel that the it was well written and I'm in awe of how much of what the author wrote in the early 1930s as fiction has become fact in the present. What I didn't like about the book was the use of drugs and how drug use was considered normal and how children was encouraged to play sexual games. My only complaint with the writing of this book is with the character of Bernard. I thought that he would be the character to rebel against the system but he seemed to sell out at the end. I guess science fiction isn't my genre and I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who felt the same.
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Summary: Leads you to think, with no easy answers
Review: I re-read (read it for the first time in high school, YEARS ago) this book along with my 15 y.o. daughter who was reading it for school. At least for me, the concepts and thinking within the book were even more disturbing and thought-provoking from the viewpoint of an adult, than they were when I was an adolescent. BNW has challenged me to seriously re-think some of my attitudes towards security, conformity, and protectionism ... both at the governmental and personal levels. I think it's easy in our (American) culture to be lulled by the message machines out there into thinking that life is basically about the pursuit of pleasure and ease. This book suggests that there is more to life than that, but doesn't try to give you the answer about what that "more" is. In that, it opens minds and serves as a thought starter. What more could you ask from a book? I encourage all parents who are buying this book for their kids' school book lists to take the time to give it a read themselves.
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Summary: Utopian Stability
Review: We are all told that Utopia is supposed to be a perfect place full of harmony and love. We belive that anything in a Utopian world is correct and powerfull, but Utopia's soon crumble in there own self creation. In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Huxley introduces a world far greater than our own today. The year is 632 A.F. (after Ford) and the world had just stopped a "nine year war" with devistating effects with nuclear warfare. Anthrax bombs had left civilization almost non-existing. Then a Utopia was formed in London where everything was perfect, you grew up programed how to live your life and be a perfect artificial life form. Humans were no longer given birth to, they are grown by multiplying embreyos, thus, having a lot of clones doing the same thing. This Utopia soon crumbles after John, the savage, questions everything in it and soon is exiled by the D.H.C. (Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning). John was not programed and did not come from that Utopia, he actually met with Henry Foster and Lenina Crowne in New Mexico, while Lenina Crowne was overcome with the site of filthiness and disease and non- perfection, then taking a large dose of soma. John goes to the Utopia and is facinated by the life there, he sees everything non real and fake so he becomes very independant in his own mind and questions the Utopia, causing Mustopha Mond (one of the ten world leaders) to exhile him along with D.H.C. John decides to leave on his own will and start a new life. While parting ways with his friend Bernard Marx, John retreats to an abandoned lighthouse in Surrey. His hiding place is accidently discovered by motorists. Soon after that the press appears and want statements from John. Then Lenina arrives and John feels threatned by her but she is trying to tell him something but her voice is muffled by the reportes. John beats her. The reporters from Utopia are baffled and excited by this so they start an orgy. John is soon drwn into the orgy and partakes in Soma and sex. When he awakes he realizes his endurance wont last forever, knowing this, he commits suicide. Thats pretty much the book and how everyone fallowed John at the end and when he died so did Utopia. Huxley wanted to introduce a sort of flip flop to our world. Our world has sex, drugs, and pain. His world has programed feelings, Soma pills for emotional pain and suffering, and Programed set lives. Huxley shows us what will happen if we do not limit our dangerous rate of growth voluntarily, the police state must do it for us and scinece is irresponsible and must be legally controlled. Brave New World shows us how abstract the world can turn out to be, and lothe in its own self creation causing it to end miserably.
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Summary: Wake up people
Review: All these positive reviews are good and nice and it seems as though at least half of you read the book, that's a good start. Some of you are even learning how to map patterns which is great, but please read into the book, wake up pleople. Any 5 year old can re-write the book in a long critique, Huxley already did that for us. Don't read the book look through the book. Connect the patterns, follow the back and forth tenis match of opinions that Huxley has set up, READ INTO IT. Believe me you will get way more out of it. I'll try not to repeat what everyone else has said (despite them doing it thierselves) but let me let everybody out their on a little secret. HUXLEY was a COMEDIAN. Sure he had ideas, like many other scientific writers to creat an alternate future but don't focus on that. That was at the bottom of Huxley's level of thinking. He enjoyed writting this book because it was a new level of radical rthinking. Why else would this be unavailable to buy in so many countries,... because there is more to it than the fact that test-tube babies exist today! Huxley was manking fun of humanity, he was making fun of you and me and everything we do and think about. He makes fun of our desires and tribulations, the fact that we can never be happy without sadness. Religion means nothing to Huxley but he understandes that it has also implanted itself in every society mankind has ever know since the beging of recorded time. He analyses Love in a way that Shakespeare never elaborated on (don't get me wrong the two can be compared, new ball-game. But please for the love of god (no pun itended for this Brocken down critisism of Christian faith) think fo your selves People. By the way I'm 14 years old
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Summary: Brave New World - Getting Closer to Reality?
Review: Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World to illustrate how society can go wrong. It was a very good book, and pretty well written. I believe that it deserves four stars. In the book, everyone was pre-conditioned to think what the leaders of society wanted them to think, and to work unconditionally. They are kept happy with drugs and entertainment. It is, in essence, a journey back to the dark ages, where slaves and serfs are plentiful, disguised as the glorious advancement of society.
When Huxley wrote the book in 1932, it was seen as a far-sighted prediction. Now, this horrible future could be awaiting us just around the corner. This book contains many parallels to modern life. Just as in the book, religion has almost been eliminated from public life, and replaced with total materialism. Now, everyone in the industrialized world worships themselves. In the book, every human baby is cloned, grown in bottles, and sleep-conditioned in the ways of society. We have already started down that perilous path. We may have already cloned the first human baby, and DNA engineering is not far off. Will this be the fate of our future? Only time will tell.
Overall, my impression of Huxley's book is that it is a very good work. It is very accurate and reasonably well written, although I believe he stressed unimportant things at times. On the whole, it was a very thought-provoking novel. I had a hard time putting it down.
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Summary: Finally! A System That Works!
Review: Poverty, war, illness, hunger, unemployment, and dispair are all eliminated in the brave new world created by Aldous Huxley. But we, the readers, are very disturbed with this world, because people are satisfied with contentment. Strong emotions of any sort are nonexistant; people are made, not born; happiness with superficial; sex isn't a passionate moment, but merely a pleasant pasttime; and your life and place in society is decided before you are "born." Awful isn't it? That's what Huxley wants you to think. This book is a warning, showing how unity and stability can eat up the joys of life. But all is relative. We, the readers, see this novel as frightening and disturbing, because it takes out all of the wonderfuls of life and leaves us with goods. But what's wrong with that? Everybody, down to the men who clean the gutters (semi-moron Epsilons), are perfectly happy with the work they do and their place in society. It's a system that works. "But look at all that they are missing!" you say, "Passion and emotion and love and motherhood and sadness and sorrow and depression ... it is all gone." It is indeed ... but, what if there is someone from somewhere else, looking down on us, and thinking: Look at all that they are missing. We just can't possibly fathom what they are talking about. And neither can the people of this brave new world. A very interesting social critisism, Brave New World is one of thoes books that you must read.
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Summary: Are you the Savage?
Review: Excellent Utopian primer. But remember the fate of the Savage at the end... and at whose hand he dies. To me, that's the central lesson.
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Summary: A Strange Dystopia
Review: What can I say about this book? Well, even though it is somewhat dated, you can still see a similar world as a possible future. It is less likely than it once was, with Bradbury and Orwell seeming more likely. In this future world, we have all of mankind addicted to pleasure. We have genetic engineering so that people have their roles assigned to them long before they are born. We have sleep teaching of children. We have a world of slaves who do not know they are slaves and without any masters. That is the most eerie part of this book - the slaves without the masters, the government that exists and doesn't exist at the same time. In order to keep the people complacent and happy, there are regular orgies and easily provided drugs. Many people will be turned off by that last bit, the sex and drugs culture, and that will become the focus of their concentration. Such is a symptom of the society, but they would miss the cause. This book is enjoyable on it's own, but it works even better as part of a study of dystopian futures.
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