Rating: 
Summary: Bland
Review: A prophetic vision of a distant future, where humans are hatched, and choice is a thing of the past. Brave New World describes a regimented, worldwide government where men and women are bred into a particular caste, and conditioned from infancy to appreciate their lives as workers and consumers. Sometimes it seemed an attack against communism, at other times a treatise on 'stability with happiness' versus 'instability with human struggle.' Regretfully, the characters were unlovable, and at times seemed barely human. The struggle against the government turned out to be not much of a struggle at all, more of a polite conversation with some tears. There was no fear or darkness, and only a little bit of contention. Towards the end, the characters turned didactic, quoting Shakespeare and waxing scholarly. It made the story feel more like an essay than a book. For a touching futuristic tale of governmental intrusion, read Orwell's 1984 instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Premise, Poor Story
Review: I know this is supposed to be one of the great pieces of modern literature. One of the three great negative-utopias. A classic.And yet, I just didn't feel very much for it. There's a wonderful concept... In the future, the world has given up on many things... chaos, destruction, war. It's also given up religion, love, and individualism. Your social status is pre-determined before birth, and in some cases, before conception. Pregnancy no longer exists for humans in the civilized world, as children are born in centers, some "bokanovskinized" to be 70-90 identical twins, all used to staff a single area. People take drugs that have no withdrawals. Promiscuity and sociality are highly promoted. People are habilitized for their own aspect of life so that they will be pleased with it. Social castes enhoy their own castes and nothing more. Stability rules all. Worship has gone to the Ford Model-T. Everyone is happy. This is an original premise for a book, an excellent idea, and it deserves much praise. It centers on much controversy, even for today, about our values, desires... It can even be argued whether it is truly a dystopia or a true utopia, as everyone is happy. So why three stars? In the Introduction, the author lists that there are many flaws with the book. He's very right. While the concept is grand, the way it is executed into a story is poor. It begins with the concept instead of the characters, and then proceeds with the Director of the Hatchery explaining to a group of students how the hatchery works. One of the main characters, Bernard Marx, is hardly introduced in his person for a while, and while this alone isn't bad, it seems as if the shifting style of the book suggests that Huxley really didn't know what he wanted to do with his idea, simply that he had the idea and wanted to use it in some way. While the Savage, the accidental child of two civilized people, one of which remains trapped in a Savage Reservation, where uncivilized people live, is brought to London, everything focuses as if it were the END of the book, when it's really still has another third or more to go through. Bernard is raved over his association with the Savage, meanwhile the Savage's opinions about all he sees aren't explored at all until his fateful encounter with Lenina. It's sad to see such a concept go so poorly, and I feel that Huxley should have gone along with his attempted revision, at least to see how it would turn out. The only merit I can give to the story is the climax where the Savage and friends meet the resident World Controller and discuss why things must stay a certain way, and even then, it's feverishly reminiscent of the climax in George Orwell's 1984. And then, the ending itself, shows not the repension that the Savage wants, but a poor descent into madness and his growing obsession with the works of William Shakespeare that is hardly an ending at all. I recently caught the TV Movie adaption of Brave New World. The concept is the same, but much of the story has changed, and for the better. One line that reminds me of the lack of opinion from the Savage in the book is profoundly impacting in the film, at the point where the Savage enters the Hatchery: "I see a factory." The people of civilization never considered it to be such, and it shows not only that the Savage can understand complex things around him, but also that he simplifies the process of how humans are born to the assembly line that Ford's cars were produced on. The book is worth reading if only for the concept. The story is horridly structured, but everything else is well-worth the time of reading. The concepts WILL cause questions to arise in mind of what is truly right and wrong, and hopefully the methods used in this idea of the future will have some impact on you. The efforts of Bernard and John (the Savage) certainly won't. -Escushion
Rating: 
Summary: A Superb Novel
Review: What happens when someone is not allowed to be there true self? Anger, rage, madness. This is the theme of _Brave New World_. Aldous Huxley paints a very graphic and horrifying picture of the future. It is a future where individuals are set on a certain path, and they cannot change that path regardless of their best efforts. In this "Brave New World," people are not controlled by either fear or pain; those elements of life are actually non-existent in this world. Rather, they are controlled by their happiness, and their ignorance to anything but the most pleasant aspects of life. They live a life that seems quite attractive at first; no fear of death, no pain, and sexual intercourse with anyone and everyone (they are actually frowned upon if they aren't promiscuous.) Furthermore, in the event that something that could be painful occurs, they wash it away with the hallucinogen "soma." This is a great book. Huxley converts you to the way of the establishments thinking, and then destroys that logic with his own. Society cannot function if the individual is neglected. It must have room to think and believe, without the interference of government to hinder it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disturbing Look at the Future
Review: Could this happen? A world where "civilization is sterilization". A world where eugenics and state-sponsored conditioning determines the likely outcome of everything, including an individual's proclivities, dreams, and ambitions. A world where freedom of thought is disdained in the interest of stability and happiness. A world where God has been dethroned and locked in a closet because mankind no longer has any use for Him. In Huxley's Brave New World, all choices have been eliminated and replaced with a pre-programmed sense of self and duty. Although written long ago, this work still presents the reader with many relevant things to think about today. And it is somewhat disturbing to notice that many of things that compose this brave new world are, in fact, either in place today, or someone is working on them.
Rating:
Summary: Great read for techies
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book, originally for an english class. This seems much more likely than George Orwell's 1984. I actually see many of the things in this book happening now; the disposable clothes, more sex, more birth control, test tube babies, reliance on drugs. It's all very interesting considering the time when he wrote it. I think he wrote it very well, many of the things he was writing about had not come into existence. I seem to relate quite well to Bernard in the story, being American and Latin in a Latin country at the moment. It's a combination of fitting in and not wanting to I think. I like the way Huxley Has the social classes and personal thoughts mixed in the reading. It seems to me that some day very soon many of the things in the book are very possible to occur. I'm planning on re-reading this book a couple of times to get every detail out of it that I can. Sadly this book is not for eveyone, I'm afraid you probably won't like it if you don't enjoy technology as much as I do. then again, you just may like it. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read
Review: this book was really good. i started reading it because it was on a college book list i had gotten, but i finished the whole book in 3 days... without giving away anything... it was a facinating story about how future life could really turn out to be like.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good
Review: I had to read this book for a general psychology class. I expected it to be extremely odd and hard to understand. It was a little on the odd side, but I actually made it through the entire book (not a common thing because I don't have a lot of time on my hands to just sit down and read a book). I bought the cliffs notes for it as well, which helped when I would read the summary and explanation before I would read the book itself. Overall, a really well written and interesting book.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely Misunderstood. A Work of Genius
Review: First of all, to weigh any bias I may have towards my review, Brave New World is my favorite novel so far. (I say so far, because I have many more to read in my lifetime.) I feel that the theme of the book, the reason that makes it so powerful, the reason it is a work of genius, is completely overlooked. Many people label Brave New World as one of the "dystopias", with 1984 and We. Both are great books and accurately portray a true dystopia, but Brave New World is completely different! If you would read the forward by Aldous Huxley, you will find the true meaning of Brave New World. He was not speaking of politics, with a communist rule taking over and instilling the Utopia on people, or how society could go wrong on itself. The true purpose of Brave New World is labeling insanity. Huxley says how hard it is to be truely sane. Society (the utopia) and religion (the land of the barbarians) are the two insanities we face. In the preface he regrets not having put in a middle opportunity, like the opportunity we are currently in, but the two extremes were brilliantly written in the novel. This book single-handedly shows you how insane we are as we live in society, and how insane we are when we go to church, temple, synagogue, or worship any diety, spirit, etc. Have you ever wondered WHY you worship these invisible things, why you hold allegance to invisible borders in countries, and why you fall victim of the irrationality of both society and religion? Perhaps the most gripping scene of the entire novel is the end, in which the Utopians are laughing at the man whipping himself in repent. The scene is a summary of the main idea in Brave New World, that religion and society are insane! I think people are missing out on one of the greatest books of the twentieth century.
Rating:
Summary: Equal to Eugene Zamiatin's "We" of 1925
Review: "The Wanting Seed" is equal to Eugene Zamiatin's 1925 work titled "We." It outdistances Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New Worlds" in originality and is easy to understand and your mind's eye gets a picture that is believed. It keeps pace with today's changing attitudes in different life-styles and public acceptance of infidivual differences. It is not Utopia, but it is not such a horrible dis-Utopia either, but something one might accept with reservation. If only it were turned into a motion picture like the film titled "A Clockwork Orange."
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly Overrated
Review: After I fell in love with "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451", it only made sense to read "Brave New World." I sat down and began to read it, being immediately engrossed by the incredible idea of mass-human production. I was amazed at the intense physcological and philosophical dialouge, and I was appauled at the morality that exists in this henious "utopia" (and even more so considering how relevant it is to our current society. I told myself I was going to read the entire book that night (and I did), because I couldn't sleep not knowing what happened. I guess Huxley should've ended the book there, because I found myself until 3:00 AM because I actually didn't want the burden of reading this piece of junk hanging over my head. The book has an incredible exposition, but a weak and eventless body that leads to a not-so-climactic climax and a poor excuse for an ending. It definately lacks the depth, relevance, and eerie prophecy that made "1984" one of the greatest books ever. With Huxley's commendable use of language and obvious literary mind, this could've been great...but it wasn't. After a mind-blowing beginning, the plot is shot in the face and the book reads with the excitment of an grocery store romance novel. This is a hemmoroid of a doomsday novel...avoid it like the plague.
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