i have a thing for Stranger in a Strange Land. i’ve probably read it 10 times. it’s not the book i’ve read the most, but it’s up there. i thought it was time for a change, so i picked up Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by aldous huxley.

i was supposed to read excerpts of this in my philosophy class when i was 18, and i vaguely remember skimming over pieces of it and never really giving it much attention. the book was an assignment, a chore, and not something that i would have even fathomed to give a chance. i don’t know why i haven’t picked it up again until now, but i’m glad i did.

the basic plot of this book is similar to stranger in a strange land. a person is brought from a different place into a very different world from where they came. there are people around them that are different from the rest of the world and, in one form of fashion, they are bound to the outsider. things change. the book ends.

if i simply read the book, i don’t think i would have appreciated it as much if i hadn’t read the preface. there was a lot of huxley in this book, and without knowing at least a brief history of him, i don’t think the full message would have been conveyed.  the society in his book was a deliberate reaction to what was going on around him, and the environment around him lead directly to his predictions of what the future world would be like. what’s really creepy is that the book was written in 1932. think of all the things that hadn’t happened yet.

what’s really creepy about it, though, is how much of what he described in his utopian society came to be true. he got to see some of it, for better or for worse, before he died. he talked about much of it in brave new world revisited, which to me was more fascinating than the book itself. granted, huxley based some of his future society based on what things were starting to happen in science, education, and general society around him. but to the extent that so much of it happened in such a short amount of time is mind blowing. equally fascinating was huxley’s relationship with george orwell, which huxley talks about, as does the writer of the preface.

a lot of generalities, i know. i don’t want to give too much of it away in the hopes that someone will stumble upon this post one day and be curious enough to read the book. i would definitely get the version that has the revisited piece. read the preface to get a little history about huxley, read the book, then read revisited. the collection will make for an good read and a very thought provoking journey with a very interesting guy and mind.