Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley

At the same time, many of the concerns Huxley sheds light on seem to be getting worse rather than better which can make for a depressing read. Luckily, Brave New World is often combined with Revisited these days!Īmazingly, I still found most of Huxley’s concerns profound and very relevant today. So, you may want to read these two books first if you haven’t but I wouldn’t say it’s required. In his analysis, Huxley often refers to scenarios presented in Brave New World and also George Orwell’s 1984. Twenty-seven years later, in this third quarter of the twentieth century A.D., and long before the end of the first century A.F., I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing Brave New World.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited In the passing from one extreme to the other, there would be a long interval, so I imagined, during which the more fortunate third of the human race would make the best of both worlds-the disorderly world of liberalism and the much too orderly Brave New World where perfect efficiency left no room for freedom or personal initiative. Ours was a nightmare of too little order theirs, in the seventh century A.F., of too much. “In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time… Covering topics like overpopulation, propaganda, and drugs, this collection of essays became Brave New World Revisited! These thoughts resulted in a series of essays highlighting many of society’s problems and potential solutions as he saw them. Fast forward to 1958 and he was shocked by how quickly society was moving towards his predictions. When Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, he set his sci-fi dystopia over 600 years in the future.

Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley