[throwanem]

I'm not sure that's a complete perspective, either. It's been a minute since I last read the book, but doesn't the world society offer an option of exile for those who can't tolerate participation in it? I recall Mond offering that to John, anyway.

Read in retrospect, one could find in it a cri de coeur on behalf of what is today called "authenticity" and, oft as not, itself manufactured (#vanlife).

I think what the book is really missing, in the light of a century hence, is a discussion of how this exquisitely planned, designed, and constructed society handles a crisis - a change in circumstances that calls the assumptions of its design into question or invalidates them outright. When Huxley wrote, it was still possible to repose one's faith in technological positivism, which was after all the vastly prevailing intellectual current of the day. These days, maybe not so much - if nothing else, the last few decades have put a lot of deep dents in the idea that we, as a species in the large, can and will engineer ourselves out of any difficulty we encounter. I'd like to see someone take on the question of what happens to the Brave New World society in the face of that.