Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
Original Title: Brave New World
Author: Aldous Huxley
Publication Date: 1932
Genres: Fiction, Dystopian, Science-fiction
File Version: 1.0
Set in London in the year AD 2540, Brave New World anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that combine profoundly to change society.
What if the future was a tyranny, but one cleverly person intended to keep the mass of society unaware of this? The people would be provided with several distractions, daily life would be ruled by sex and drugs, and pervasive mass media would suppress the possibility of any original thought: in such a society the ruling elite would not need to fear any kind of rebellion.
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for The Observer included Brave New World chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.