Brave New World (1932) is a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley. Set in the London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society.
The general idea is a World Government manipulates people so as to make them easier to govern. They are split into five castes, hatched by the state to fill preset positions in society. The lower castes, which are clones, are treated with chemicals to arrest their mental and physical developmentThe civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.'In 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' people are controlled by inflicting pain. In 'Brave New World' people are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
Aldous Leonard Huxley (July 26, 1894- November 22, 1963) was a British writer who emigrated to the United States.
He was a member of the famous Huxley family who produced a number of brilliant scientific minds. Best known for his novels and wide-ranging output of essays, he also published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts. Through his novels and essays Huxley functioned as an examiner and sometimes critic of social mores, societal norms and ideals, and possible misapplications of science in human life.

The astonishing novel Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's legendary vision of a world of tomorrow utterly transformed. In Huxley's darkly satiric yet chillingly prescient imagining of a utopian future, humans are genetically designed and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded and as a thought-provoking yet satisfying entertainment.

This deluxe edition also includes the nonfiction work Brave New World Revisited, a thought-jabbing, terrifying book (Chicago Tribune), first published in 1958. It is a fascinating essay in which Huxley compares the modern-day world with his prophetic fantasy envisioned in Brave New World. He scrutinizes threats to humanity such as overpopulation, propaganda, and chemical persuasion, and explains why we have found it virtually impossible to avoid them.


From the Inside Flap
With a Foreword by Christopher Hitchens

Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 � 22 November 1963) was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts.

Aldous Huxley was a humanist and pacifist, and he was latterly interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. He is also well known for advocating and taking psychedelics.

By the end of his life Huxley was considered, in some academic circles, a leader of modern thought and an intellectual of the highest rank