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Title: Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited
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Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
List Price: $16.95
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| Customer Reviews: |
| Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Harper Perennial Modern Classics Bloody Fantastic | | A friend of mine recommended this book to me because he knew what my views were on religion, art, and government. If you are a reader who is interested in what is going on in the world today, you need to read this book. Huxley's vision of the future is a bleak one; fueled by communistic propaganda, drug addiction, and brainwashing. Huxley's writing is unconventional (especially the first part of the book) and fantastic. This book changed my view on how I see the world and the future. That's a power book. | | Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Harper Perennial Modern Classics Good, but not a Masterpiece | I bought this book about a year ago after reading Orwell's 1984 for the first time, some other reading got in the way (mostly school related - I'm a med student) but this spring break I decided to go for it.
The first few chapters are truly captivating. There is something very active about the narrator's voice and how he establishes mood, describes the most inner details, hints on character relations, etc. This is lost as I continued on through the next chapters, and somewhat picked up near the end. Maybe I missed something throughout my reading, if anyone cares to point out flaws in my review.
It is good reading and obviously highly influential in later publications by other authors, but I found 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 to be more shocking and controversial throughout the whole book. Next on my shelf is A Clockwork Orange. | | Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Harper Perennial Modern Classics Prophetic and Frightening | I have always enjoyed novels that provided me with a glimpse of the future. Unlike the George Orwell classic, "1984," Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" envisions a more benign form of oppression or a kinder, gentler form of totalitarian rule. All that is required to be sacrificed is your individual soul and spirit. Prepare to be enslaved with full rations.
The nightmare that Huxley described is no less frightening than that of Orwell, but this luxurious hell has better wall paper and the latest advancements in terms of interior design. Where Orwell related the horrors of oligarchical collectivism, Huxley posited a dictatorship premised upon a culture of narcissism. Constant celebrations and liberal doses of Soma are necessary for members of the populace to avoid pausing from their orgies long enough to contemplate the bleakness and emptiness of a fundamentally sterile existence.
Under the guise of liberation, sexual promiscuity without the consequences of disease or paternity is openly encouraged and tolerated. Cosmetic surgery enables the hedonists to defy the ravages of time and decay. If you are having a bad day or a dull hour, drugs are readily available to whisk you away to a state of euphoria, forgetfulness and bliss. Immediate gratification is the only aim of civilization. Only primitives would want to marry and establish families. Reproduction is better conducted in controlled laboratories where genetic engineering can promote physical perfection and limit the intelligence of specimens to what is required of their particular caste or intended occupation.
The only form of rigid government suppression occurs in the censorship of knowledge. Forbidden books include the Bible and other religious tracts, plus all forms of historical and philosophical works. No individual should be permitted to consider the proposition that the unexamined life is not worth living. Tunnel vision must be maintained.
Huxley reevaluated his own novel in an essay entitled "Brave New World Revisited" and examined how new technological advances both science and medicine have made his predictions not only possible, but, perhaps, inevitable.
"Brave New World" remains relevant and it is an essential book that every thinking person ought to read. | | Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Harper Perennial Modern Classics Best Edition Available of the Classic | "Brave New World" is the very definition of a flawed novel: It succeeds on so many levels (ideas, vision, creativity) at the expense of other levels (dialogue, characterization). It raises questions and promotes discussion, though, and, despite its flaws, managed to be one of the most important books published in the 20th century.
Huxley's own analysis of his novel, included here as the non-fiction collection "Brave New World Revisited," expands on many of the ideas that he raised in the original novel. This edition also includes a wonderfully witty introduction by Christopher Hitchens that's almost worth the cover price alone.
Huxley's letter to his former student George Orwell is tagged onto the end, but it's something that I could have done without--Huxley believed that Orwell's vision of the future was imaginative but not as accurate as Huxley's "Brave New World": "Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons..." Unfortunately (or fortunately?), governments have a lot more to worry about today besides controlling their own citizens, as neither "Brave New World" nor "1984" have been fully realized. | | Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Harper Perennial Modern Classics Great Social Commentary | Brave New World is a fascinating read, in which Aldous Huxley satirizes society (society in 1932, but still to a certain extent, society in 20-07) by portraying a world steeped in dystopia and a people repressed, though not repressed in the common sense. In Huxley's novel, people's desires are pandered to by the government; all of their greatest longings are fulfilled in a society that offers unlimited sexual pleasure without the idea of marriage or monogamy and unlimited "soma," a drug used to alleviate stress and send the user into a euphoric state of ecstasy.
People are geared from an early age to accept the state of the world through hypnopædia, a sleep-teaching technique, and a manipulative genetic procedure that allows the government to extract multiple embryos from one to make thousands of the same looking individual. A hierarchy is created by further manipulating individual embryos into producing either scrawny, short humans (Epsilons) or strong intellectuals (Alphas). Huxley's vision (as opposed to Orwell's vision of a society kept in submission through fear and physical force) is one in which the government does not repress the people overtly; rather, it allows them the freedom of abandoning old moral values, such as marriage, commitment, and intellectual curiosity, for more pleasurable values, such as promiscuity and drug addiction.
The book as a piece of literature is not so much plot driven or driven by its characters; rather, it is a book of ideas. So, if you're looking to read something that's going to appeal to you from a literary standpoint, then this probably isn't the best book since Huxley's characters are simply there to accentuate his ideas. Overall, in regards to the validity of this piece, I don't really see many parallels to contemporary society: yet. For example, the genetics discussed in the book are not really plausible at this point and I'm skeptical as to the capabilities of hypnopædia.
Brave New World Revisited is another fascinating work, in which Huxley tackles subjects like over-population (a phenomenon he believes will allow leadership to become more manipulative due to the increasing distance between representatives and constituents) and propaganda. While I don't really subscribe to the ideas expressed in works such as We, Brave New World, and 1984, I'm always awe stricken by the social and political prowess of these books, and I would wholeheartedly recommend Brave New World. | | Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Harper Perennial Modern Classics Product Description | The astonishing novel Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's vision of the future -- of a world utterly transformed. Through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, people are genetically designed to be passive and therefore consistently useful to the ruling class. This powerful work of speculative fiction sheds a blazing critical light on the present and is considered to be Huxley's most enduring masterpiece. Following Brave New World is the nonfiction work Brave New World Revisited, first published in 1958. It is a fascinating work in which Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world with the prophetic fantasy envisioned in Brave New World, including threats to humanity, such as overpopulation, propaganda, and chemical persuasion. |
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