Aldous Huxley
‘Brave New World’ was written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published the following year. The story is set in London in 2540 AD, focusing on developments in reproductive technology and sleep learning in order to alter society.
It opens with the population unified under The World State, a peaceful global society, wherein goods and resources are plentiful because the population is permanently limited to only two billion people.
Natural reproduction is obliterated and children are instead born and raised in artificial hatcheries and conditioning centres. All members of the society are conditioned since childhood to hold World State values in high regard. Everyone is also encouraged to consume the ubiquitous drug soma, a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable, hangover-free trips or vacations.
Recreational heterosexual sex is an integral part of World State. Here, everyone belongs to everyone else with sex being just a social activity instead of a reproductive process. Women who are able to reproduce must take birth control pills. In this case, romantic relationships and sexual competition are obsolete. Here, marriage, natural birth, and pregnancy are taboo in casual talk.
Spending time alone is seen as an utter waste of time. Seeking to be an ‘individual’ in a group is seen as horrific and embarrassing. People here need to either spend a day with friends playing golf or in bed.
Typically, people die at age 60, after having lived a happy, youthful life. Death is not feared. Since there is no family, no mourning for a loved one is necessary.
But, despite the utopian principles, this world causes disastrous effects on its people and the hope for a better, humane life.
The author, Aldous Leonard Huxley, was one of the most prominent members of the Huxley clan. He is popular for his novels, most notably ‘Brave New World,’ and other essays, short stories, poetry, travel writing, films, and short stories.
‘Crome Yellow’ (1921) focuses on Victorian and Edwardian social principles that led to World War I. ‘Antic Hay’ (1923), on the other hand, expresses the mood of disenchantment in the early 1920s.
He was banned and condemned for explicit discussion of sex in his novels. Copies of ‘Antic Hay’ were burned in Cairo while ‘Brave New World,’ ‘Point Counter Point,’ and ‘Island’ were excluded from Time Magazine’s Best 100 Novels list in 2006.
‘Brave New World’ and ‘Island’ present Huxley’s indictment of commercialism based on importation from other countries. Definitely, ‘Brave New World’ helped the anti-utopian or dystopian view in literature and has become synonymous with a future world wherein the human spirit subsists on conditioning and control.
Huxley received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit for ‘Brave New World’ in 1959.
In 1990, a made-for-television adaptation of ‘Brave New World’ was broadcast, starring Peter Gallagher, Leonard Nimoy, Tim Guinee, Rya Kihlstedt, and Sally Kirkland.
His other noted novels include: ‘Those Barren Leaves’ (1925), ‘Eyeless in Gaza’ (1936), ‘After Many a Summer Dies the Swan’ (1939), ‘Time Must Have a Stop’ (1944), ‘Ape and Essence’ (1948), and ‘The Genius and the Goddess’ (1955).
Huxley’s short stories include ‘Limbo’ (1920), ‘Mortal Coils’ (1922), ‘Little Mexica’n (U.S. – ‘Young Archimedes’) (1924), ‘Two or Three Graces’ (1926), and ‘Brief Candles’ (1930).
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