His grandfather and brother were top biologists, and his half-brother, Andrew Huxley, won the Nobel Prize in 1963 for his work in physiology. His family was well-known for its scientific and intellectual achievements: Huxley's father, Leonard, was a renowned editor and essayist, and his highly educated mother ran her own boarding school. Author BiographyĪldous Huxley was born on July 26, 1894, in Laleham near Godalming, Surrey, England, but he grew up in London. When the Savage, a man from the uncontrolled area of the world (an Indian reservation in New Mexico) comes to London, he questions the society and ultimately has to choose between conformity and death. All spend their free time indulging in harmless and mindless entertainment and sports activities. As adults, people are content to fulfill their destinies as part of five social classes, from the intelligent Alphas, who run the factories, to the mentally challenged Epsilons, who do the most menial jobs. Children are raised together and subjected to mind control through sleep teaching to further condition them. These Controllers create human beings in factories, using technology to make ninety-six people from the same fertilized egg and to condition them for their future lives. Standardization and progress are valued above all else. However, in order to maintain such a smoothly running society, the ten people in charge of the world, the Controllers, eliminate most forms of freedom and twist around many traditionally held human values. They enjoy leisure time, material wealth, and physical pleasures. People all around the world are part of a totalitarian state, free from war, hatred, poverty, disease, and pain.

The story is set in a London six hundred years in the future. The novel is best appreciated as an ironic commentary on contemporary values. Because Brave New World is a novel of ideas, the characters and plot are secondary, even simplistic. Though he was already a best-selling author, Huxley achieved international acclaim with this now-classic novel.

In it, the author questions the values of 1931 London, using satire and irony to portray a futuristic world in which many of the contemporary trends in British and American society have been taken to extremes. Written in 1931 and published the following year, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a dystopian-or antiutopian-novel.

A brave new world john