To my knowledge, I went through 19 years of education without ever reading what is viewed by many as a literary classic.  Stuck out of town without reading material, I picked up my high school son's volume and read it in about 3 hours.

Now, I know that it is considered a classic and it would be easy to just give it five stars and rave about the timelessness of Huxley's vision, but to be honest, if I'd picked it up at the bookstore unaware of its reputation, I'd give it three stars, so I did.  Perhaps that says more about me than about the work, but I'm not going to pretend to like a bottle of wine just because it sells for $100+.  Same theory.

The book is by no means bad.  It is very short.  It is moderately entertaining, though despite its brevity, it actually drags at times (such as when The Savage contemplates Shakespeare for a couple of pages).  There is irony in the fact that the most literate character in the book is "The Savage".  The conversation between Mons and The Savage was the high point of the book in my opinion.

Certainly, published in the 1930s, the book was timely in the face of the burgeoning eugenics movement and the assembly line techniques being perfected by Henry Ford (who was a eugenics supporter unless I'm mistaken).  However, I've got to disagree with many that label Huxley as somehow prescient, and claim that many of his dystopian visions are somehow close to fruition.  It has been 75 years, and while we have enjoyed many technological advances, I don't see us moving any closer to the type of society painted in the novel.  Certainly, the kind of authoritarian regimes that make such a society possible have utterly failed.

Perhaps it is the presence of works such as Brave New World and 1984 that serve to warn against a slide in that direction, but whatever the reason, I have every confidence that the freedom loving people of the world will refuse to be pushed into the kind of servitude set out in the novel.
To my knowledge, I went through 19 years of education without ever reading what is viewed by many as a literary classic. Stuck out of town without reading material, I picked up my high school son's volume and read it in about 3 hours. Now, I know that it is considered a classic and it would be easy to just give it five stars and rave about the timelessness of Huxley's vision, but to be honest, if I'd picked it up at the bookstore unaware of its reputation, I'd give it three stars, so I did. Perhaps that says more about me than about the work, but I'm not going to pretend to like a bottle of wine just because it sells for $100+. Same theory. The book is by no means bad. It is very short. It is moderately entertaining, though despite its brevity, it actually drags at times (such as when The Savage contemplates Shakespeare for a couple of pages). There is irony in the fact that the most literate character in the book is "The Savage". The conversation between Mons and The Savage was the high point of the book in my opinion. Certainly, published in the 1930s, the book was timely in the face of the burgeoning eugenics movement and the assembly line techniques being perfected by Henry Ford (who was a eugenics supporter unless I'm mistaken). However, I've got to disagree with many that label Huxley as somehow prescient, and claim that many of his dystopian visions are somehow close to fruition. It has been 75 years, and while we have enjoyed many technological advances, I don't see us moving any closer to the type of society painted in the novel. Certainly, the kind of authoritarian regimes that make such a society possible have utterly failed. Perhaps it is the presence of works such as Brave New World and 1984 that serve to warn against a slide in that direction, but whatever the reason, I have every confidence that the freedom loving people of the world will refuse to be pushed into the kind of servitude set out in the novel.