Huxley could have called it 2016....a MUST re-read
586593
This also could be written 2016. Read it years ago in college. Had to re-read it. It is VERY on point. Doublespeak, alternative facts, re-write history, watch the media. Big Brother is watching........the concern is whether he is a benevolent or malevolent brother!
3654773
I was glued to this book.  Huxley has amazing foresight, and although some of the ideas in the book are a bit out there, it doesn't detract from the important ideas that the book presents.  He makes many good points on where the world could all to easily lead with just the push of a button.
3425986
I read Animal Farm at 21 and 1984 at 23.  Going on 27, these books still stick me with so clearly even after not having read them for a few years.

1984 still continues to haunt me to my very core and yearns for me to re-read it, despite my reservations. It gave me nightmares even after having finished it. Totalitarian Goverment, being watched. Enough to send chills up your spine more so than Stephen King could ever hope to accomplish.

Animal Farm is a fun satire on communism and Russia.  I suggest reading it after 1984 as a break from the assault on the senses 1984 is bound to be.

Also comes with a magnificent introduction by Christopher Hitchens.

You won't come away from either book the same way you went into them.
2548548
Well, the science of Physco-History is alive and well today in 'Big Data' so it is rather eerie re-reading this wonderful tale yet again and making sure our kids read it. It was one of the few books that stayed with me through all the massive book cullings I've had to do in my life as we moved around. This is a book that should be in every library and it's funny how back then, it felt like the cutting edge of a marvelous world of science fiction and yet today, it seems more of a near future possibility. Asimov was brilliant and still is, after all these years. If you haven't read it in a while, give it a try again. If you've never read it, you're in for a treat!
4079920
A friend of mine tweeted recently that we were living Brave New World. I hadn't read it yet, but coincidentally (or not), I'd just ordered it from ThriftBooks. Well, I suppose I better move it up the list, then.

Aldous Huxley certainly wastes no time in horrifying the reader. From the very first chapter, I read slack-jawed in terror about the "utopia" he had created for us. There are definite similarities to what we are seeing today. I don't know that we are there yet, but we should certainly be wary. It is alarming, for sure.

As far as the book goes--this is going to have to be a twofer. I will need to reread it again. I understood the overall themes and concepts, but I didn't connect with any of the characters. Maybe it was just too abstract for me.

I have two observations to make:

The first, is just about utopias in general. In every other utopia I've read--The Giver, for example--the drug use is hidden. The leaders don't want society to know they must have drugs to suppress their natural urges, go on with the utopian lifestyle, etc. The drug is always hidden in vitamins, or the water, or something. Here, it is relished, open, necessary. Not taking high doses of soma is frowned upon. You SHOULD be an addict. But don't take TOO much. Don't take 20, or you will die. Take a lot, but just enough. Have fun, all of the time. Be high, all of the time.

Second, the caste system--bred into the new embryos, then taught while the children sleep. HOW CREEPY IS THAT?! This is the part that really resonates to today's world, because while we don't have a utopian system built for this yet...we have a societal structure that is already this way. Parents teaching children without realizing some of the toxic things that are getting in. I don't want to get full on conspiratorial but...I think you could see how it could go downhill fast.

Brave New World is a book that would be burnt first if ever such a thing were to happen. If literature starts disappearing, hide your copies. Read it now, while you still can. It should be read, by everyone. And read it more than once, so you know you truly understand what is happening.
1871667
BRILLIANT WORK!!!! I read this book when it first came out, and and again three decades later.  This was a prophetic and accurate depiction of science and social mores and movements, which seemed far fetched at first reading; but in reality,  every reader should have based their portfolios upon the predictions and hypotheses extrapolated here.  This book stayed with me nearly thirty years, making a deeper impression than any "must read" volume since.
3642835
I absolutely love Aldous Huxley as a person. We learned about him Senior year in high school, which is when I ordered this book. It came in great shape brand new, and for a really good price. If you like reading or if you don't, its still a great choice. You have to look at it this way, its definitely interesting the concepts he came up with and quite terrifying in some cases. Without spoiling anything, I would say you should give it a shot. There is more to reading a book than its reviews. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I am more than excited to order some more of his books now.
455372
I finished this book days ago and it is still with me and I'm still thinking about it. Brave New World is definitely not an easy read nor is it a "feel good book" that ends happily ever after. When I usually read a book, I connect with at least one character, but I did not have an attachment to any of the characters in this book. However, I did connect with what they said and how they said it.

I definitely think that Brave New World is something that everyone should read. The themes and topics addressed throughout the book are as relevant now as they were back in the 1930s when Huxley wrote it.
4265020
Zamyatin's WE, like Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984, is a classic science-fiction novel that unmasks the chilling realities of the erosion of individuality.  What makes Zamyatin's account more compelling, however, is that he wrote the novel from within the fledgeling Socialist  state of 1920's Russia (it wasn't even published there until 1988).  Therefore, Zamyatin can lay claim to a firsthand understanding of the  fallacies of the Soviet collective unlike the eccentric British  intellectuals Orwell and Huxley.  Although Zamyatin's language, at times,  is a bit peculiar by nature, this Twentieth Century Classics translation is  perhaps the easiest to understand, as the translator shied away from word  use that would not register smoothly in the mind of a contemporary English  reader.  If you have read Brave New World or 1984, you will certainly want  to compliment them by reading this excellent masterpiece in 20th century  European literature!
2560852
Brave New World is a worthy book, that is not nearly as dark as it could be. A truly unrealistic view as to what may happen in the future allows for a comfortable distance between what is put forth in the book and what is possible, yet some elements to be seen in Huxley's world can be seen in our own, even today. An excellent choice for anyone looking for a book that can provide intellectual stimulation while remaining enjoyable and entertaining.
2077447
It has become almost automatic, at least in academic circles, when discussing futuristic dystopias, to draw a comparison between Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD and Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, a comparison that really serves little purpose, especially since BNW was written seventeen years before 1984 (and it wasn't the first in the genre; somehow Zamyatin's WE, written an entire decade before Huxley's work, gets lost in the shuffle:  it has been some time since I myself read WE, and I read two different translations, so I would have to tackle it again to be able write a review that would do it justice), and when you look closely at the two books, the authors' intentions, mode of attack, tone, and ultimate effect are so different that a comparison seems not only a waste of time but more than a little unfair.

Aldous Huxley was a man with a very fertile brain, a vivid imagination, and a sense of humor as wide-ranging as it was sometimes odd.  BRAVE NEW WORLD is ultimately a satire of the first order:  Huxley presents us with a future vision of London in which the making of babies has been completely divorced from the sex act, with infants being created on assembly lines and specially treated to become what they will become:  everyone from intellectuals to "semi-morons" are created for the jobs they will eventually perform.  And the children, once in existence, are subjected to conditioning and sleep-teaching so that when they reach adulthood they are not only happy with their lives, the concept of living any way other than the way they do is incomprehensible.

So everyone's happy...well, sort of.  More accurately, everyone's satisfied.  The separation of sex and parturition has not removed sex from the equation; far from it:  in fact promiscuity is the order of the day, though to today's reader it seems a tad bit odd that Huxley seems to assume that male-female sex is the only kind that would be around in such a society.  It's hard to imagine that Huxley didn't think of it, but he simply left out the possibility of homosexuality and said nothing about it.

The problem that arises is that society, in divorcing the sex act from the reproductive act completely, and in fact removing all feelings from it that are not mere tactical sensations, has robbed sex of all its meaning and has chosen to suppress a part of human nature that would be very strong if people would stop having fun long enough to think about the emptiness of their lives.

This emptiness becomes illustrated vividly when two Londoners visit a "savage" reservation in New Mexico and encounter a "savage" named John, a half-breed who was born to a London woman who got lost on a visit to the reservation some twenty-five years previously.  We meet John and his mother Linda, and we also discover that the man who fathered John happens to be the superior back in London of Bernard Marx, who suffers from an inferiority complex and who decides to bring the "savages" back to London to further his own ends.

The rest of the novel is a tad bit of a mess, all culture shock and repercussions and the explosive result when two diametrically opposed cultures clash.  Some of it is a bit ridiculous; those who don't fit in are sent to island exiles that when you think about it would be paradise for anyone who wanted an escape from a culture they found stifling, but which for some reason are portrayed as a punishment.  And the novel ends on a melancholy note that seems a bit odd:  in such a well-ordered society, one would not expect something like what happens to occur.  It isn't completely incredible, but it is a bit of a stretch, but the warning back of it is clear:  we had best watch where we are headed before we lose our humanity.

If I had to say which was the better novel, I would say that overall 1984 is superior, but BNW is an insidious and sneaky novel that opens up looking like a paradise and ends up being a hell for some of its characters.  Orwell made no such attempt at subterfuge.
60692
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.
2524021
Along with 1984 this is the best story in the Genre.  Couldn't put it down.
Filled with so many familiar catch phrases that sum up the dystopian future that Huxley prophetically creates.
4207318
Oh man, back in the early 1990s where we thought everyone in 2015 would be on computer-enhanced-psychedelics, living in VR, and main-lining smart drugs.  A visionary look into the future; some that happened, others that might still happen.  Art work and style cannot be beat on this book too.
3895883
Having first read Brave New World while in highschool, I was curious to discover what my reaction to it might be twenty years later.  Having read it a second time, I have even more respect for the work and marvel at the  predictions that Huxley  made.  While he certainly was poking fun at  society with most of his predictions, the more fearful ones certainly leave  one somewhat unsettled.  One must ask how close we have come to his Utopian  society in our modern age.  The intrusions of the press as it strives to  give us the real story might be the most frightening parallel between the  book and our society.  For all the moments when the book scares us, makes  us laugh or forces us to ponder our fate, it is a real masterpiece.  Even  more so when one considers it was written seventy years ago.  Many thanks  to my highschool English teacher who assigned it to me twenty years ago.  Here's hoping today's highschools will still allow such a book to be  available to today's students.
1608560
This is a thoughtful book, in which Huxley has used his great knowledge of human relations to bring an eerie reality to this story. This is ones of those books that cannot be ignored. This book was written before the mark  of the Nazi totalitarian state of World War II and used the tool of  conditioning and drugs instead of military terror and might, that was the  basis of George Orwell's "1984" that was written after the war.  It was  an exciting look into Huxley's view of society in the future and the social  problems linked with it. Well worth the read.
4657453
I read Aldoux Huxley's The Island (a eutopian vision) first, and needed to know how the opposite side of his vision felt.  This book must have been revolutionary, shocking, horrifying to people when it was written.  The overarching themes of god, love, family and government play out in a truly strange, but not unimaginable way.  I'm glad I got to check off another "classic" from my list