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Summary: How can you not love this book!
Review: This book is really well written. I loved it. I have to say though I am a little sick of people trying to ban it. This book, while written a long time ago still has relevancy today. Even if you are not in the mood for a "heavy" book, it is still a good read. I think anyone who wants to consider themselves well read, should read this book.
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Summary: Huxley has created a book of the ages
Review: Aldous Huxley has won a prominent place on my bookshelf with this book. The book was a surprisingly easy read that I found myself fascinated by, and I ended up completing the book in just one evening.The book presents us with a view of the Utopian world of the future, but things aren't quite what the people of this world would like us to believe. People are stripped of their individuality and are expected to conform for the good of the community. The book has a number of important messages about the present and future, as well as communism and human behavior. A number of people really dislike this book because they put it off as "too weird or utopian". However, if you enjoy the book half as much as I did, you'll walk away with the feeling of being glad that you read it.
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Summary: So far ahead of its time, I can hardly believe it
Review: I read "Brave New World" in high school, and the raging debate in our classroom was "Which view of the future is more probably, the one in "1984" or Huxley's mad scientist view?" We decided it was more likely "1984." After all, the Cold War was with us, nuclear destruction was on our minds and the Viet Nam War looked suspiciously like the war with Eastasia. We had World War II's Stalin as a model of Big Brother, complete with moustache. Yet, now that it is 2003 and way past 1984, it's apparent that author Huxley was incredibly prescient. He set a tragedy modeled on Shakespeare (Othello mixed with elements of The Tempest--hence the title "Brave New World". ) It's set in a futuristic state where babies are cloned and grown extra-utero in glass jars. A happy state of drugged complacence (Prozac?) is the norm. Sex is free of emotional ties, in fact, promiscuity and gratuitous sex are required by law! Entertainment is mindless (Disco? Survivor? Joe Millionaire?) and real literature and art are subversive. This book is a must-read and it will change how you view our cultural. For me, re-reading this book was like reading it for the first time. Our cultural environment has changed so much since the time I first read this book in the Sixties that it was as if I had read another book entirely. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
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Summary: A work of ages
Review: The phrase "Just do it." may seem ordinary and simple but to those who have been exposed to Brave New World such a phrase is symbolic of what some may call Aldous Huxley's vision. In his vision of technological advancement, Huxley proposed a very enlightening prophecy. It would be one that the future would prove to be most accurate and realistic. As a visionary, Huxley's work is not only a cold portrait of the future but a warning of what is yet to come if man does not conquer his need for instant gratification and his fascination with technology. In Brave New World 's ominous setting, Huxley illustrates a society, which parallels to the world that we know. In this world we see the promotion of drugs, sex, and unity. Huxley uses this world to question the direction of where we as a people are headed. He questions our future through his vision. His many visions allow us to peak into his thought. For example, he envisioned a place in which, life was created in a lab instead of between two human beings. He also imagined the destruction of life due to a nine-year war. Huxley's entire book is evidence of him being a visionary. It is in his many foresights from classes of human beings to the pre-conditioning of minds that we see his vision and what would eventually manifest into his prophecies. Huxley's prophecies are extremely accurate. Huxley sends a fierce warning to the world by showing how technology could eventually lead you to become Epsilons in a world where, "We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human being, Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers." Such a prophecy has yet to come true but many others such as the creation of life due to cloning. Despite arguments the science world has created clones of animals, like the well-known Dolly. Some believe we have also cloned humans. Among other prophecies was the promotion of sex. With the overflow the internet and pornography such a prophecy is fulfilled. Like those people within Brave New World they are able to access information regarding sex very easily. In fact, it was promoted with the younger children experimenting with each other's bodies. Today, with a few clicks of a keyboard a children can indulge themselves in enough information regarding sex that they could make a career in sharing such information. Another prophecy is the conditioning of our minds with phrases like "the ending is better than mending". Today's conditioning is done to consumers with phrases like "Hungry Why Wait?" and "Can you hear me now?". In a sense, Huxley's biggest prophecy is the destruction of everyday feelings such as pain, fear, pride, and individuality. With the world of science and the influence of television such a prophecy is true. Both science and television allow you to conform to a certain way if you choose to. Science allows you to change your body or create a false high like those with soma. Television allows everyone to conform to a certain style and promotes certain behavior through entertainment. Huxley's prophecies are evident and are extremely accurate. It is in the curiosity and instant gratification of man that will drive mankind into the abyss of a Brave New World. Huxley illustrated such an idea through his indirect reference to Henry Ford. Ford, most known for the assembly line influenced a mass movement. It was a movement toward production but not just any type of production, mass production. Thus, people began to desire for items and they were readily accessible. In the long run this affects people in general not because of the production but because of the mentality. It is in that mentality that we see the citizens of Brave New World eager to want and receiving. It is in that desire that we loose what gratification we hold for those things which do not come easily. Instead we settle for those things, which characterize a utopia, happiness, unity, and joy. By doing this we give up the right to be free, the right to think, and ultimately, the right to live. Aside from instant gratification it is the curiosity of man that will lead him into a utopia. Man has the desire to reach the unreachable. It is the knowledge in Brave New World allowed them the know how of cloning people. This curiosity is what allowed them to forget about the past and focus on the future. With curiosity of man comes the grace of technology. Huxley clearly illustrates that technology allowed these people to condition the minds of others and pre-determine their purpose in life. The paradox in with this is that the items that are supposedly making our lives easier will eventually lead to our destruction. Brave New World cannot be prevented. Man has a desire to learn. With that desire to learn he finds a way to make life easier. He also finds knowledge. With that knowledge comes a desire for one thing or another. In the end the focus is placed on bringing about an instant feeling of good. When we continue to focus on what makes us feel good then fate will lead us to a utopia. It is inevitable. This world will become our Brave New World
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Summary: the truth
Review: After reading both Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984, I have come to the conclusion that both of these men were not so much visionaries or prophets, but they did see the world in a different light than most: they saw it in its true light. I just read BNW and was absolutely blown away that someone had done such a great job at attempting to portray the scary rate at which we are sending this world into a state of total denial, where we allow propaganda to rule us, and to lose our voice completely. Huxley's writing style, which moves swiftly and smoothly, really captures the essence of a world in which everything is just assumed to be the right thing and no one speaks out. The society in the novel is basically one where everything works very orderly, and anything out of the order is considered to be uncivilized. And when life becomes too much for a given person, they can take the precious soma tablets which, knowing Huxley's extensive drug experimentation, would supposed to resemble acid or other strong hallucinogens. I loved this book and could not get enough of how nearly everything that Huxley commented on was true, or something that is headed down the road for the future. Some people read material by Orwell and Huxley and are scared by the things that they basically predict that will happen in the not-so-far future. However, I just listen to these predictions and I don't think of them as predicitons. I think of them as true statements about today's world and the things to come if we continue to follow down this path.
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Summary: An ominous warning of a possible future
Review: After reading CONQUEST OF PARADISE, a frightening book about the decline of civilization into a worldwide totalitarian police state, I was compelled to go back and read this classic. In BRAVE NEW WORLD, Aldous Huxley grips the mind, and keeps you locked to the book's pages as he describes a future, one which is completely homogeneous and conformed. Practices like artificial conception and genetic tampering are the standard in this uniform society, where very few choices are allowed, and questions are rarely heard. CONQUEST OF PARADISE also examines similar technological advancements in our day by studying the development of molecular nanotechnology and its implications. Huxley skillfully describes this gloomy premonition in incredible detail, and in many instances, including artificial insemination and genetic altering, he predicted the actual future. If it does nothing else, this book should send an ominous signal to today's society. This book is a definite, must read!
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Summary: wonderfully entertaining
Review: loved this book from beginning to end.. in some ways it was a little scary..
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Summary: A Realistic Possibility for the Future.......
Review: This book is the best book I can remeber reading to date. The languauge is fairly easy to understand and extremley enticing. You will have a tough time putting this book down. The main jist of the story is about a totalitarian utopia that could possibly arise in the not so far future. It is a world where there is no instability whatsoever and people are kept ignorant for the purpose of maintaining the stability. The book is about a few interupptions in this system and how they are dealt with (I don't want to give anything away). THIS IS A MUST READ!!!
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Summary: Huxley is a genius and near prophet!
Review: Aldous Huxley wrote this book in 1931. Yet, even now we are seeing the cause-and-effect beginnings of such a hedonistic lifestyle. Huxley produces a work-of-art, though as he admits, it has it's flaws. Brave New World centers itself on a story of a world without morals and absolutes and how its fancy for hedonistic pleasures leads it toward apathy and infantilism. Subsequently, when a so-called Savage is entered into the picture, mearly a young boy with an conscience and morals, he is the talk of the town and the largest voice for freedom from such degradation. Sadly true to our world, Huxley predicts the wave in which mankind seems to desire to move. An amazing book, this one will make your head spin with pictures of what might be, what is, and an ending you may not expect! Read it! I suspect you'll enjoy it.
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Summary: Huxley = Genius?
Review: Is Brave New World actually all that much of a brilliant book, complete with social implications? Absolutely. Is Aldous Huxley a prophet? By no means. Although his ideas are genuine and the book is extremely well-written, and altogether hilarious, Huxley makes the assumption that there will never be any kind of social or political opposition to this type of a society. He makes the Brave New World too outrageous, too unbelievable to think that society would ever come to such a point, and indeed, it hasn't, isn't now, and never will. Perhaps liberal ideology is flawed, but democracy and the fact that there is opposition to the liberal ideas always preclude the implications Huxley asserts. So.. read Brave New World. Enjoy It. It may change your life, but never consider Aldous Huxley a prophet in any sense.
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