Rating: 
Summary: Rather, a play
Review: A play that couldn't be produced thus Huxley made it a framed narrative. Yet another attempt at the world falling apart it keeps the reader's attention while maintaining the pace--one thing that Huxley can always be given credit for. Graveyard scene will come back to haunt.
Rating: 
Summary: Cacotopian Novel
Review: A while ago I read an article in (I think) The New Yorker stating nobody reads Huxley anymore. Well, I decided to reread Ape and Essence (one of my all time favorite titles for a book, incidentally). The bizarre parts of the book are still great fun (Give me detumescence / that means you), but the story is a little weak as it is more concerned with being shocking, I think, than being a good story. I would recommend Island (a utopian novel) instead. In Ape and Essence the fact that the humor is so dated is interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Acceptably trippy screenplay and more!
Review: Aldous Huxley is known for two things, the brilliant futuristic novel Brave New World, and Doors of Perception,
the annoying LSD induced book that inspired the name of Jim
Morrison's band. Somewhere between these two stages of his life and artistic career, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. Its
humor is almost indistinguishable from its horro, a truly
successful work from that point of view only. Add to that
one of the most unique narrative formats ever used (a 30 some-odd page short story acting as a preface to this sci-fi
screenplay), an absolute irreverence for contemporary Holly-
wood and the future of organized religion, a contrasting of
guilt with passive irresponsibility, and an uncharacteristic
(for Huxley) optimistic ending. This is one of those books
you'll never see in a book store and you might even be hard
pressed to find it in most libraries. Still, it's nothing
short of a treasure. It's sharp and warped and it makes you
think a whole hell of a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Acceptably trippy screenplay and more!
Review: Aldous Huxley is known for two things, the brilliant futuristic novel Brave New World, and Doors of Perception,the annoying LSD induced book that inspired the name of Jim Morrison's band. Somewhere between these two stages of his life and artistic career, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. Its humor is almost indistinguishable from its horro, a truly successful work from that point of view only. Add to that one of the most unique narrative formats ever used (a 30 some-odd page short story acting as a preface to this sci-fi screenplay), an absolute irreverence for contemporary Holly- wood and the future of organized religion, a contrasting of guilt with passive irresponsibility, and an uncharacteristic (for Huxley) optimistic ending. This is one of those books you'll never see in a book store and you might even be hard pressed to find it in most libraries. Still, it's nothing short of a treasure. It's sharp and warped and it makes you think a whole hell of a lot.
Rating:
Summary: The Novel is the Message
Review: Aldous Huxley's Apes and Essence is science fiction combined with the allegorical drive of a Swift's Gulliver's Travels. It ought to assume a proud place beside other works on retro-futures -- novels like, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and films of the Mad Max genre. Huxley is convinced that we opted for the worst of both worlds -- East and West -- by failing to curb the capability of science with the wisdom and moderation of Eastern mysticism. Here too is the brave new eugenicsl, and insofar as Huxley is trying to point to this as a future dilemma, he is decisively on track.
Rating:
Summary: Someone produce this, please.
Review: Huxley see-sawed between two periods during his literary career : a period of bitterness towards the shortcomings of Western society and a period of enlightenment that gave him brief glimpses into what comes after death. This quasi-film script is fit for Hollywood, especially at a time when the cinema industry is becoming overridden with trash. It is truly the halmark of Huxley's "bitter" period and came at a time when he wrote with complete honesty of where he felt civilization is leading. He came to scrutinize <Ape> in his later essay <Brave New World Revisited> but he never ruled out the possibility of its coming true. The visions Huxley uses are so real in his depiction of post-war Los Angeles that the reader may, for a few moments after reading, lose the will to live and lose all of his faith in goodness enduring through the coming ages.
Rating: 
Summary: Bizarre and Forgettable
Review: I am a tremendous fan of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." Seeing that this book had high marks by other reviewers, I thought I might enjoy it. I have trouble believing that the same author wrote both books."Ape and Essence" begins in the movie industry where an old discarded script is discovered. The movie industry employees seek out the writer only to find he has been dead for a few weeks. After this revelation, the book jumps into the actual script. The script reads like a cheap romance novel. In a strange savage land, a man from civilization falls in love with a primative woman. They face conflict, but there forbidden love endures. They run away together and live happily. And we never find out what happens to the ever so fortunate movie mogels who rescued the script from incineration. Was Aldous Huxley suffering from writer's block when he wrote this? It is certainly not his best work. There is a reason few people have read this book. It is not very good.
Rating:
Summary: Bizarre and Forgettable
Review: I am a tremendous fan of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." Seeing that this book had high marks by other reviewers, I thought I might enjoy it. I have trouble believing that the same author wrote both books. "Ape and Essence" begins in the movie industry where an old discarded script is discovered. The movie industry employees seek out the writer only to find he has been dead for a few weeks. After this revelation, the book jumps into the actual script. The script reads like a cheap romance novel. In a strange savage land, a man from civilization falls in love with a primative woman. They face conflict, but there forbidden love endures. They run away together and live happily. And we never find out what happens to the ever so fortunate movie mogels who rescued the script from incineration. Was Aldous Huxley suffering from writer's block when he wrote this? It is certainly not his best work. There is a reason few people have read this book. It is not very good.
Rating:
Summary: Bizarre and Forgettable
Review: I am a tremendous fan of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." Seeing that this book had high marks by other reviewers, I thought I might enjoy it. I have trouble believing that the same author wrote both books. "Ape and Essence" begins in the movie industry where an old discarded script is discovered. The movie industry employees seek out the writer only to find he has been dead for a few weeks. After this revelation, the book jumps into the actual script. The script reads like a cheap romance novel. In a strange savage land, a man from civilization falls in love with a primative woman. They face conflict, but there forbidden love endures. They run away together and live happily. And we never find out what happens to the ever so fortunate movie mogels who rescued the script from incineration. Was Aldous Huxley suffering from writer's block when he wrote this? It is certainly not his best work. There is a reason few people have read this book. It is not very good.
Rating: 
Summary: the other Brave New World
Review: I can't read this book (as I have a number of times) without thinking of it as the flip side to Brave New World. I still find myself wandering into the library, grabbing the book and thumbing through the pages for passages that inspire and depress me!
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