a still powerful and thought-provoking novel about a quite possible future...

short plot description: in the year AD 2540 humanity has developed a stable world society with a rigid social system. War, poverty and disease are almost unknown as are families, relationships, religions, natural reproduction and arts. Children are not born but cloned and conditioned from an early age to fit into their alloted place in society. Almost everyone is almost always happy and if not there is always Soma to take your worries away. Only in places called reservations people are living a low-tech natural live. After an introduction to the current status quo we follow the events as John Savage (whose mother was originally from the civilised society) gets taken out of a reservation and introduced to this Brave New World.....

my thoughts: feels in places more like an essay than a novel and its age is showing here and there. I found the few characters who aren't intentional two-dimensional not very convincing and the plot turn at the end of the book somewhat strange.
But the world Huxley builds is fascinating and actually believable. The solution how to keep society stable is implemented in a frighteningly consequent manner: happy people don't make trouble. Keep people happy by conditioning them from the earliest age and tell them that they are happy. If you are not happy something is wrong with you but here are some drugs to help you with your problem. Still not happy? You just won a one-way trip to a very remote part of the world. And so you don't get any wrong ideas into your conditioned head we remove everything from society which might give you any ideas.
Well executed and actually quite seductive since everyone wants a safe existence free from hardship and Huxley shows you us a word where this is possible (there seems to be no money, everyone can have everything they want anytime but since everyone is conditioned to want only specific things this poses no real problem).
Question is how much has to be sacrificed for this (eternal?) happiness and is it worth the sacrifice?


my advice: read purely as a novel for entertainment this might disappoint since it shows its age in places but as food-for-thought this is very good.