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BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley.
A dystopian novel that examines a futuristic society: The World State, which revolves around science and efficiency, where emotions are conditioned out of the individual at a young age, where social hierarchy is based only on intelligence, where everyone belongs to everyone else...
About Aldous Huxley (Taken from Encyclopedia Britannica):
Born on July 26, 1894, Godalming, Surrey, England, Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence whose works are notable for their wit and pessimistic satire. He remains best known for one, Brave New World (1932), a model for much dystopian science fiction that followed.
Aldous Huxley was a grandson of the prominent biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and was the third child of the biographer and man of letters Leonard Huxley; his brothers included physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley and biologist Julian Huxley. He was educated at Eton, during which time he became partially blind because of keratitis. He retained enough eyesight to read with difficulty, and he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1916. He published his first book in 1916 and worked on the periodical Athenaeum from 1919 to 1921. Thereafter he devoted himself largely to his own writing and spent much of his time in Italy until the late 1930s, when he settled in California.
Huxley established himself as a major author with his first two published novels, Crome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay (1923); these are witty satires on the pretensions of the English literary and intellectual coteries of his day.
Brave New World (1932) marked a turning point in Huxley's career: like his earlier work, it is a fundamentally satiric novel, but it also vividly expresses Huxley's distrust of 20th-century trends in both politics and technology. The novel presents a nightmarish vision of a future society in which psychological conditioning forms the basis for a scientifically determined and immutable caste system that, in turn, obliterates the individual and grants all control to the World State.
The novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) continues to shoot barbs at the emptiness and aimlessness experienced in contemporary society, but it also shows Huxley's growing interest in Hindu philosophy and mysticism as a viable alternative. Many of his subsequent works reflect this preoccupation, notably The Perennial Philosophy (1946).
Huxley's most important later works are The Devils of Loudun (1952), a detailed psychological study of a historical incident in which a group of 17th-century French nuns were allegedly the victims of demonic possession, and The Doors of Perception(1954), a book about Huxley's experiences with the hallucinogenic drug mescaline. His last novel, Island (1962), is a utopian vision of a Pacific Ocean society.
The author's lifelong preoccupation with the negative and positive impacts of science and technology on 20th-century life, expressed most forcefully in Brave New World make him one of the representative writers and intellectuals of that century.
On his deathbed (November the 22nd 1963) , unable to speak owing to advanced laryngeal cancer, Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for "LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular." According to her account of his death, in This Timeless Moment, she obliged with an injection at 11:20 a.m. and a second dose an hour later; Huxley died aged 69 (So he literally tripped out of existence). Media coverage of Huxley's death, along with that of fellow British author C. S. Lewis, was overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the same day, less than seven hours before Huxley's death. Damn, that day was cursed.
Huxley and Hollywood.
Yeah, Huxley involved himself with several Hollywood projects, including Walt Disney himself. Perhaps all of this is a bit ironic... Taken from Wikipedia:
In March 1938, Huxley's friend Anita Loos, a novelist and screenwriter, put him in touch with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which hired him for Madame Curie which was originally to star Greta Garbo and be directed by George Cukor. (Eventually, the film was completed by MGM in 1943 with a different director and cast.) Huxley received screen credit for Pride and Prejudice (1940) and was paid for his work on a number of other films, including Jane Eyre (1944). He was commissioned by Walt Disney in 1945 to write a script based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the biography of the story's author, Lewis Carroll. The script was not used, however.
Huxley on 1984:
On 21 October 1949, Huxley wrote to George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, congratulating him on "how fine and how profoundly important the book is". In his letter, he predicted:
Huxley and Eastern Religions/Mysticism:
Huxley's thought that Eastern wisdom traditions was entirely compatible with a strong appreciation of modern science. Biographer Milton Birnbaum wrote that Huxley "ended by embracing both science and Eastern religion".In his last book, Literature and Science, Huxley wrote that "The ethical and philosophical implications of modern science are more Buddhist than Christian...." In "A Philosopher's Visionary Prediction," published one month before he died, Huxley endorsed training in general semantics and "the nonverbal world of culturally uncontaminated consciousness," writing that "We must learn how to be mentally silent, we must cultivate the art of pure receptivity.... [T]he individual must learn to decondition himself, must be able to cut holes in the fence of verbalized symbols that hems him in."
He was also highly involved with the Vedanta Society of Southern California. From 1941 until 1960, he contributed 48 articles to Vedanta and the West, published by the society. He also occasionally lectured at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta temples.
And about his psychedelic experiences...
In early 1953, Huxley had his first experience with the psychedelic drug mescaline. Huxley had initiated a correspondence with Doctor Humphry Osmond, a British psychiatrist then employed in a Canadian institution, and eventually asked him to supply a dose of mescaline; Osmond obliged and supervised Huxley's session in southern California. After the publication of The Doors of Perception, in which he recounted this experience, Huxley and Swami Prabhavananda disagreed about the meaning and importance of the psychedelic drug experience, which may have caused the relationship to cool, but Huxley continued to write articles for the society's journal, lecture at the temple, and attend social functions. Huxley later had an experience on mescaline that he considered more profound than those detailed in The Doors of Perception.
Huxley wrote that "The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a less self-centered and more creative life."
Though Huxley scholars consider him an agnostic.
Vote for your favorite cover! (You can vote up to 3 choices)
Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition (2006)
Original Edition:
Vintage Classics Edition (2007)
Persian Edition:
1974 Penguin Edition
Muza (Polish) Edition
Arabic Edition:
Vintage Classics Edition (2018)
Vintage (2016) edition
Kindle 2021 Edition (lmao this cover)
Of course I wouldn't forget the >reddit
PLACES WHERE THIS BOOK HAS BEEN BANNED list... (From Wikipedia)
The following include specific instances of when the book has been censored, banned, or challenged:
Study Guides:
Spark Notes: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/
Litcharts: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/brave-new-world
Shmoop: https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brave-new-world
Course Hero: https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Brave-New-World/
Further Reading:
Brave New World at 75: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/brave-new-world-at-75
Between Heaven and Hell: Novel about Huxley, Lewis and Kennedy arguing in purgatory lol
View: https://www.amazon.com/Between-Heaven-Hell-Somewhere-Kennedy/dp/0877843899
Aldous Huxley's Americanization of the "Brave New World" Typescript https://www.jstor.org/stable/3176042
Barfoot, C. C., ed. Aldous Huxley between East and West. New York/Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001.
De Koster, Katie, ed. Readings on Brave New World. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1999.
Perrenial Philosophy. Huxle's book about comparative mysticism.
View: https://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Philosophy-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0061724947
The Doors of Perception. Huxley's essay about, uh, drugs.
View: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Aldous-Huxley/dp/0061729078/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_US=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&crid=1BC5I7F3ZPJA7&keywords=the+door+of+perception&qid=1670381890&s=books&sprefix=the+door+of+perception%2Cstripbooks%2C135&sr=1-1
D.A.R.E website https://dare.org/
The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis. (Apparently people like to compared the ideas of Lewis essay and Huxley's novel...)
Happy Reading:
A dystopian novel that examines a futuristic society: The World State, which revolves around science and efficiency, where emotions are conditioned out of the individual at a young age, where social hierarchy is based only on intelligence, where everyone belongs to everyone else...
About Aldous Huxley (Taken from Encyclopedia Britannica):
Born on July 26, 1894, Godalming, Surrey, England, Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence whose works are notable for their wit and pessimistic satire. He remains best known for one, Brave New World (1932), a model for much dystopian science fiction that followed.
Aldous Huxley was a grandson of the prominent biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and was the third child of the biographer and man of letters Leonard Huxley; his brothers included physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley and biologist Julian Huxley. He was educated at Eton, during which time he became partially blind because of keratitis. He retained enough eyesight to read with difficulty, and he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1916. He published his first book in 1916 and worked on the periodical Athenaeum from 1919 to 1921. Thereafter he devoted himself largely to his own writing and spent much of his time in Italy until the late 1930s, when he settled in California.
Huxley established himself as a major author with his first two published novels, Crome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay (1923); these are witty satires on the pretensions of the English literary and intellectual coteries of his day.
Brave New World (1932) marked a turning point in Huxley's career: like his earlier work, it is a fundamentally satiric novel, but it also vividly expresses Huxley's distrust of 20th-century trends in both politics and technology. The novel presents a nightmarish vision of a future society in which psychological conditioning forms the basis for a scientifically determined and immutable caste system that, in turn, obliterates the individual and grants all control to the World State.
The novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) continues to shoot barbs at the emptiness and aimlessness experienced in contemporary society, but it also shows Huxley's growing interest in Hindu philosophy and mysticism as a viable alternative. Many of his subsequent works reflect this preoccupation, notably The Perennial Philosophy (1946).
Huxley's most important later works are The Devils of Loudun (1952), a detailed psychological study of a historical incident in which a group of 17th-century French nuns were allegedly the victims of demonic possession, and The Doors of Perception(1954), a book about Huxley's experiences with the hallucinogenic drug mescaline. His last novel, Island (1962), is a utopian vision of a Pacific Ocean society.
The author's lifelong preoccupation with the negative and positive impacts of science and technology on 20th-century life, expressed most forcefully in Brave New World make him one of the representative writers and intellectuals of that century.
On his deathbed (November the 22nd 1963) , unable to speak owing to advanced laryngeal cancer, Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for "LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular." According to her account of his death, in This Timeless Moment, she obliged with an injection at 11:20 a.m. and a second dose an hour later; Huxley died aged 69 (So he literally tripped out of existence). Media coverage of Huxley's death, along with that of fellow British author C. S. Lewis, was overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the same day, less than seven hours before Huxley's death. Damn, that day was cursed.
Huxley and Hollywood.
Yeah, Huxley involved himself with several Hollywood projects, including Walt Disney himself. Perhaps all of this is a bit ironic... Taken from Wikipedia:
In March 1938, Huxley's friend Anita Loos, a novelist and screenwriter, put him in touch with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which hired him for Madame Curie which was originally to star Greta Garbo and be directed by George Cukor. (Eventually, the film was completed by MGM in 1943 with a different director and cast.) Huxley received screen credit for Pride and Prejudice (1940) and was paid for his work on a number of other films, including Jane Eyre (1944). He was commissioned by Walt Disney in 1945 to write a script based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the biography of the story's author, Lewis Carroll. The script was not used, however.
Huxley on 1984:
On 21 October 1949, Huxley wrote to George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, congratulating him on "how fine and how profoundly important the book is". In his letter, he predicted:
"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narcohypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience."
Huxley and Eastern Religions/Mysticism:
Huxley's thought that Eastern wisdom traditions was entirely compatible with a strong appreciation of modern science. Biographer Milton Birnbaum wrote that Huxley "ended by embracing both science and Eastern religion".In his last book, Literature and Science, Huxley wrote that "The ethical and philosophical implications of modern science are more Buddhist than Christian...." In "A Philosopher's Visionary Prediction," published one month before he died, Huxley endorsed training in general semantics and "the nonverbal world of culturally uncontaminated consciousness," writing that "We must learn how to be mentally silent, we must cultivate the art of pure receptivity.... [T]he individual must learn to decondition himself, must be able to cut holes in the fence of verbalized symbols that hems him in."
He was also highly involved with the Vedanta Society of Southern California. From 1941 until 1960, he contributed 48 articles to Vedanta and the West, published by the society. He also occasionally lectured at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta temples.
And about his psychedelic experiences...
In early 1953, Huxley had his first experience with the psychedelic drug mescaline. Huxley had initiated a correspondence with Doctor Humphry Osmond, a British psychiatrist then employed in a Canadian institution, and eventually asked him to supply a dose of mescaline; Osmond obliged and supervised Huxley's session in southern California. After the publication of The Doors of Perception, in which he recounted this experience, Huxley and Swami Prabhavananda disagreed about the meaning and importance of the psychedelic drug experience, which may have caused the relationship to cool, but Huxley continued to write articles for the society's journal, lecture at the temple, and attend social functions. Huxley later had an experience on mescaline that he considered more profound than those detailed in The Doors of Perception.
Huxley wrote that "The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a less self-centered and more creative life."
Though Huxley scholars consider him an agnostic.
Vote for your favorite cover! (You can vote up to 3 choices)
Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition (2006)
Original Edition:
Vintage Classics Edition (2007)
Persian Edition:
1974 Penguin Edition
Muza (Polish) Edition
Arabic Edition:
Vintage Classics Edition (2018)
Vintage (2016) edition
Kindle 2021 Edition (lmao this cover)
Of course I wouldn't forget the >reddit

The following include specific instances of when the book has been censored, banned, or challenged:
- In 1932, the book was banned in Ireland for its language, and for supposedly being anti-family and anti-religion.
- In 1965, a Maryland English teacher alleged that he was fired for assigning Brave New World to students. The teacher sued for violation of First Amendment rights but lost both his case and the appeal.
- The book was banned in India in 1967, with Huxley accused of being a "pornographer".
- In 1980, it was removed from classrooms in Miller, Missouri among other challenges.
- The version of Brave New World Revisited published in China lacks explicit mentions of China itself.
Study Guides:
Spark Notes: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/
Litcharts: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/brave-new-world
Shmoop: https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brave-new-world
Course Hero: https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Brave-New-World/
Further Reading:
Brave New World at 75: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/brave-new-world-at-75
Between Heaven and Hell: Novel about Huxley, Lewis and Kennedy arguing in purgatory lol
View: https://www.amazon.com/Between-Heaven-Hell-Somewhere-Kennedy/dp/0877843899
Aldous Huxley's Americanization of the "Brave New World" Typescript https://www.jstor.org/stable/3176042
Barfoot, C. C., ed. Aldous Huxley between East and West. New York/Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001.
De Koster, Katie, ed. Readings on Brave New World. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1999.
Perrenial Philosophy. Huxle's book about comparative mysticism.
View: https://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Philosophy-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0061724947
The Doors of Perception. Huxley's essay about, uh, drugs.
View: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Aldous-Huxley/dp/0061729078/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_US=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&crid=1BC5I7F3ZPJA7&keywords=the+door+of+perception&qid=1670381890&s=books&sprefix=the+door+of+perception%2Cstripbooks%2C135&sr=1-1
D.A.R.E website https://dare.org/
The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis. (Apparently people like to compared the ideas of Lewis essay and Huxley's novel...)
Happy Reading:
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