❝There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.❞
-- Aldous Huxley
English writer and philosopher, Aldous Leonard Huxley, who was born on July 26, 1894 in Godalming, Surrey, England and died on November 22, 1963 in Los Angeles, California, wrote nearly 50 books consisting of novels, non-fiction, essays, and satires. His range was gifted in the acute far-range intelligence within his works. His well-known novel is Brave New World (1932), a model for a genre that we call dystopian science. Huxley got his education at Eton, which he became partially blind because of keratitis. He was able to retain reading but it was difficult, and he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford in 1916.
Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publishing travel writing, satires, and screenplays. In 1921 and 1923, he published his first two novels, Crome Yellow and Antic Hay; these are witty and malicious satires on the pretensions of the English literary. He followed up with two additional novels, Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928) all before he moved to California in the late 1930s.
Brave New World was a huge turning point in his career: the novel dives into Huxley's distrust to of the 20th century trends in both politics and technology. The tone of the novel is similar to a nightmare vibe of the future society focused on the psychologically conditioning and made into a caste system and takes away individuals and encourages control to the World State.
Huxley was nominated for his the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. He continued writing satires and similar themes in Eyeless in Gaza (1936), After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939), The Devils in Loudun (1952), The Doors of Perception (1954) and his last novel, Island (1962) about a utopian society.
Discussion Questions:
What's the difference between dystopia and utopia? Why do you think the genre has grown to this modern day?
If Huxley saw our technology with social media, scans, smart phones, what do you think he'd say? And would he write a rewrite of Brave New World? If so, what would be different or similar in the 1932 edition?
Which of his works do you wish to read? Going to add to your "to-be read" list?
Always open to additional questions and comments on about Aldous Huxley and his works.
If there is another author you would like to see a discussion on, please post your suggestion in the comments below for a chance to be featured in a future chapter!
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