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Cover of Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited

  • 340 pages · about 6 hours
  • First published 1942
  • 28 editions

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1 About this book

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley prophesied a capitalist civilization, which had been reconstituted through scientific and psychological engineering, a world in which people are genetically designed to be passive and useful to the ruling class.

Huxley opens the book by allowing the reader to eavesdrop on the tour of the fertilizing Room of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning center, where the high tech reproduction takes place. One of the characters, Bernard Marx, seems alone, harboring an ill-defined longing to break free.

Satirical and disturbing, Brave New World is set some 600 years into the future. Reproduction is controlled through genetic engineering, and people are bred into a rigid class system. As they mature, they are conditioned to be happy with the roles that society has created for them.

Good for readers who want: science fiction and dystopian fiction.

  • Science fiction
  • Dystopian fiction
  • Political
  • Family life
  • Freedom
  • Genetic engineering
  • Totalitarianism
  • Brainwashing

2 About Aldous Huxley

1894–1963

Aldous Leonard Huxley ( AWL-dəs; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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