In an alphabetically segregated, prescription drugs regulated, physiognomy-riven, future, Aldous Huxley has created the ultimate dystopian utopia. When your every desire is catered to and you have nothing to strive for, Huxley argues, you may achieve a certain level of happiness but at the cost of the very things which make you human. Central to every argument against genetic engineering since it was published Brave New World is both a great and flawed book. The ideas in it are informed by pre-WWII society and its trends. Its author, later in life, came out against some of the tenets propagated by the book. Despite this, Brave New World is an important book in every sense of the word. Visionary in its approach, brave in its attempt, it asks questions which are still relevant today and to which the answers have still to be found.
Enhanced with a CoolZone that offers a window into the writer's mind, takes us on a tour of the web and offers to partially demystify Genetic Engineering Cool Publications' edition of Huxley's classic is a resource that should reside on every desktop, laptop and PDA.
Somewhere in Mexico a Savage is found. Suffering from all the ills of humanity, self-educated through his reading of Shakespearean plays he becomes the main attraction and a benevolent experiment in the 642AF (After Ford) society of the future.
He also becomes a catalyst, precipitating unwelcome change in some of the protagonists who, confronted with a humanity they have firmly held in check, are forced to ask the perennial question: what exactly is it that makes us, human?
About the Author
The English novelist and essayist Aldous Leonard Huxley, b. July 26, 1894, d. Nov. 22, 1963, a member of a distinguished scientific and literary family, intended to study medicine, but was prevented by an eye ailment that almost blinded him at the age of 16. He then turned to literature, publishing two volumes of poetry while still a student at Oxford. His reputation was firmly established by his first novel, Crome Yellow (1921), a witty satire on the intellectual pretensions of his time. That set the tone for his work. An establishment outsider who wanted to fit in Huxley managed to bring a laser-like wit to the pompousity of his class. A lover of American society and its openess he nevertheless managed not to be blinkered to its faults and he worked hard to bring his observations into his writing. He is chiefly rememembered for Brave New World a novel that rightly or wrongly has stood at the heart of the debate about the progress of genetic engineering.
SJRLC services are funded by dollars appropriated by the New Jersey Legislature for the New Jersey
Library Network and administered by the New Jersey State Library, an affiliate
of Thomas Edison State College.
