Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf Editions.

199 Pages·2004·1.12 MB·English

Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf Editions.
Brave New World.
Aldous Huxley.
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In 1938 he befriended J. Krishnamurti, whose teachings he greatly
admired. He became a Hindu in the circle of Swami Prabhavananda,
About the author and he also introduced Christopher Isherwood to this circle.
He started meditating and became a vegetarian. Thereafter, his
works were strongly influenced by mysticism and his experiences with
the hallucinogenic drug mescaline, to which he was introduced by the
Aldous Leonard Huxley (July 26,
psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in 1953. Huxley’s psychedelic drug
1894 - November 22, 1963) was a
experiences are described in the essays The Doors of Perception and
British writer. Best known for his
Heaven and Hell. The title of the former became the inspiration for the
novels and wide-ranging output of
naming of the rock band, The Doors. Some of his writings on
essays, he also published short stories,
psychedelics became frequent reading among early hippies. His wife,
poetry and travel writing.
Maria, died of breast cancer in 1955, and in 1956 he re-married, to
Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England, being a son of
Laura Archera (Huxley).
the writer Leonard Huxley by his first wife, Julia Arnold; and grandson
In 1960, Huxley was diagnosed with throat cancer. In the years
of Thomas Huxley. Julia died in 1908, when Aldous was only thirteen.
that followed, with his health deteriorating, he wrote the utopian novel
Three years later he suffered an illness which seriously damaged his
Island, and gave lectures on “Human Potentialities” at the Esalen
eyesight. His near-blindness disqualified him from service in World
institute. His ideas were foundational to the forming of the Human
War I. Once his eyesight recovered, he read English literature at Balliol
Potential Movement. At a speech given in 1961 at the California
College, Oxford.
Medical School in San Francisco, Huxley said: “There will be in the
Huxley completed his first (unpublished) novel at the age of
next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love
seventeen and began writing seriously in his early twenties. He wrote
their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak,
great novels on dehumanising aspects of scientific progress, most
producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so
famously Brave New World), and on pacifist themes (e.g. Eyeless in
that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but
Gaza). Huxley was strongly influenced by F. Matthias Alexander and
will rather enjoy it.”
included him as a character in Eyeless in Gaza.
On his deathbed, unable to speak, he made a written request to
During World War I, he spent much of his time at Garsington
his wife for “LSD, 100 µg, i.m.” She obliged, and he died peacefully
Manor, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Later, in Crome Yellow (1921)
the following morning, November 22, 1963 (the same day as John F.
he caricatured the Garsington lifestyle, but remained friendly with the
Kennedy and C. S. Lewis).
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Morrells. He married Maria Nys, whom he had met at Garsington.
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n Huxley moved to Llano, California in 1937, but like his friend the
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philosopher Gerald Heard who accompanied him, Huxley was denied
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n citizenship since he refused to ascribe his pacifism to religious beliefs.
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Contents
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Click on a number in the chap-
Chapter 3.
ter list to go to the first page of
Chapter 4.
that chapter.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6. Note:
Chapter 7. The best way to read this
Chapter 8. ebook is in Full Screen mode:
click View, Full Screen to set
Chapter 9.
Adobe Acrobat to Full Screen
Chapter 10.
View. This mode allows you to use
Chapter 11. Page Down to go to the next page,
Chapter 12. and affords the best reading view.
Chapter 13. Press Escape to exit the Full
Screen View.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
Chapter 18.
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1
Brave New
Chapter 1.
World.
A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over
the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON
HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and,
in a shield, the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDEN-
TITY, STABILITY.
The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards
the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all
the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared
through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay fig-
ure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding
only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a
NOTICE
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2 3
Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it bor- slightly menacing geniality, “you’ll be settling down to seri-
row a certain rich and living substance, lying along the pol- ous work. You won’t have time for generalities. Meanwhile
ished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long …”
recession down the work tables. Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse’s
“And this,” said the Director opening the door, “is the Fer- mouth into the notebook. The boys scribbled like mad.
tilizing Room.” Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced
Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were into the room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent
plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning en- teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, flor-
tered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent- idly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It
minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concen- was hard to say. And anyhow the question didn’t arise; in this
tration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink year of stability, A. F. 632, it didn’t occur to you to ask it.
and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director’s “I shall begin at the beginning,” said the D.H.C. and the
heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever more zealous students recorded his intention in their note-
the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from books: Begin at the beginning. “These,” he waved his hand,
the horse’s mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for “are the incubators.” And opening an insulated door he showed
Central London always made a point of personally conduct- them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. “The week’s
ing his new students round the various departments. supply of ova. Kept,” he explained, “at blood heat; whereas
“Just to give you a general idea,” he would explain to them. the male gametes,” and here he opened another door, “they
For of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood
were to do their work intelligently–though as little of one, if heat sterilizes.” Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.
they were to be good and happy members of society, as pos- Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while
sible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virture and the pencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief descrip-
happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not tion of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first, of course,
s philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose of its surgical introduction–”the operation undergone volun-
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n the backbone of society. tarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it
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t “To-morrow,” he would add, smiling at them with a carries a bonus amounting to six months’ salary”; continued
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4 5
with some account of the technique for preserving the ex- fectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized
cised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a con- adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one
sideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred grew before. Progress.
to the liquor in which the detached and ripened eggs were “Essentially,” the D.H.C. concluded, “bokanovskification
kept; and, leading his charges to the work tables, actually consists of a series of arrests of development. We check the
showed them how this liquor was drawn off from the test- normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds
tubes; how it was let out drop by drop onto the specially by budding.”
warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it con- Responds by budding. The pencils were busy.
tained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and trans- He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of
ferred to a porous receptacle; how (and he now took them to test-tubes was entering a large metal box, another, rack-full
watch the operation) this receptacle was immersed in a warm was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight min-
bouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa–at a mini- utes for the tubes to go through, he told them. Eight minutes
mum concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can stand. A
centimetre, he insisted; and how, after ten minutes, the con- few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two;
tainer was lifted out of the liquor and its contents re-exam- most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to the
ined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two
again immersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertil- days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four,
ized ova went back to the incubators; where the Alphas and eight, the buds in their turn budded; and having budded
Betas remained until definitely bottled; while the Gammas, were dosed almost to death with alcohol; consequently bur-
Deltas and Epsilons were brought out again, after only thirty- geoned again and having budded–bud out of bud out of bud–
six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky’s Process. were thereafter–further arrest being generally fatal–left to
“Bokanovsky’s Process,” repeated the Director, and the stu- develop in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair
dents underlined the words in their little notebooks. way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos–
s One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identi-
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n bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From cal twins–but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old
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t eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a per- viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally
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6 7
divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time. male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as
“Scores,” the Director repeated and flung out his arms, as possible–that was the best (sadly a second best) that they
though he were distributing largesse. “Scores.” could do. And even that was difficult.
But one of the students was fool enough to ask where the “For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to
advantage lay. reach maturity. But our business is to stabilize the popula-
“My good boy!” The Director wheeled sharply round on tion at this moment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over
him. “Can’t you see? Can’t you see?” He raised a hand; his a quarter of a century–what would be the use of that?”
expression was solemn. “Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnap’s Technique had
major instruments of social stability!” immensely accelerated the process of ripening. They could
Major instruments of social stability. make sure of at least a hundred and fifty mature eggs within
Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole two years. Fertilize and bokanovskify–in other words, multi-
of a small factory staffed with the products of a single ply by seventy-two–and you get an average of nearly eleven
bokanovskified egg. thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and fifty batches
“Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical of identical twins, all within two years of the same age.
machines!” The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. “And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us
“You really know where you are. For the first time in history.” over fifteen thousand adult individuals.”
He quoted the planetary motto. “Community, Identity, Sta- Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who hap-
bility.” Grand words. “If we could bokanovskify indefinitely pened to be passing at the moment. “Mr. Foster,” he called.
the whole problem would be solved.” The ruddy young man approached. “Can you tell us the record
Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform for a single ovary, Mr. Foster?”
Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass “Sixteen thousand and twelve in this Centre,” Mr. Foster
production at last applied to biology. replied without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a viva-
“But, alas,” the Director shook his head, “we can’t cious blue eye, and took an evident pleasure in quoting fig-
s bokanovskify indefinitely.” ures. “Sixteen thousand and twelve; in one hundred and
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n Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good eighty-nine batches of identicals. But of course they’ve done
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t average. From the same ovary and with gametes of the same much better,” he rattled on, “in some of the tropical Centres.
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8 9
Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand five hun- band.
dred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeen thou- Next to the Liners stood the Matriculators. The proces-
sand mark. But then they have unfair advantages. You should sion advanced; one by one the eggs were transferred from their
see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary! It’s quite test-tubes to the larger containers; deftly the peritoneal lin-
astonishing, when you’re used to working with European ing was slit, the morula dropped into place, the saline solu-
material. Still,” he added, with a laugh (but the light of com- tion poured in … and already the bottle had passed, and it
bat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin was challenging), was the turn of the labellers. Heredity, date of fertilization,
“still, we mean to beat them if we can. I’m working on a won- membership of Bokanovsky Group–details were transferred
derful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eigh- from test-tube to bottle. No longer anonymous, but named,
teen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred chil- identified, the procession marched slowly on; on through an
dren already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going opening in the wall, slowly on into the Social Predestination
strong. We’ll beat them yet.” Room.
“That’s the spirit I like!” cried the Director, and clapped “Eighty-eight cubic metres of card-index,” said Mr. Fos-
Mr. Foster on the shouder. “Come along with us, and give ter with relish, as they entered.
these boys the benefit of your expert knowledge.” “Containing all the relevant information,” added the Di-
Mr. Foster smiled modestly. “With pleasure.” They went. rector.
In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and or- “Brought up to date every morning.”
dered activity. Flaps of fresh sow’s peritoneum ready cut to “And co-ordinated every afternoon.”
the proper size came shooting up in little lifts from the Or- “On the basis of which they make their calculations.”
gan Store in the sub-basement. Whizz and then, click! the “So many individuals, of such and such quality,” said Mr.
lift-hatches hew open; the bottle-liner had only to reach out Foster.
a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and before the “Distributed in such and such quantities.”
lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the “The optimum Decanting Rate at any given moment.”
s endless band, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneum had “Unforeseen wastages promptly made good.”
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n shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yet another “Promptly,” repeated Mr. Foster. “If you knew the amount
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t bottle, the next of that slow interminable procession on the of overtime I had to put in after the last Japanese earthquake!”
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10 11
He laughed goodhumouredly and shook his head. Mr. Foster was only too happy to give them a few figures.
“The Predestinators send in their figures to the Fertiliz- Two hundred and twenty metres long, two hundred wide,
ers.” ten high. He pointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, the
“Who give them the embryos they ask for.” students lifted their eyes towards the distant ceiling.
“And the bottles come in here to be predestined in detail.” Three tiers of racks: ground floor level, first gallery, sec-
“After which they are sent down to the Embryo Store.” ond gallery.
“Where we now proceed ourselves.” The spidery steel-work of gallery above gallery faded away
And opening a door Mr. Foster led the way down a stair- in all directions into the dark. Near them three red ghosts
case into the basement. were busily unloading demijohns from a moving staircase.
The temperature was still tropical. They descended into a The escalator from the Social Predestination Room.
thickening twilight. Two doors and a passage with a double Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks, each
turn insured the cellar against any possible infiltration of the rack, though you couldn’t see it, was a conveyor traveling at
day. the rate of thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour. Two
“Embryos are like photograph film,” said Mr. Foster wag- hundred and sixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Two thou-
gishly, as he pushed open the second door. “They can only sand one hundred and thirty-six metres in all. One circuit of
stand red light.” the cellar at ground level, one on the first gallery, half on the
And in effect the sultry darkness into which the students second, and on the two hundred and sixty-seventh morning,
now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent existence–so
of closed eyes on a summer’s afternoon. The bulging flanks of called.
row on receding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted “But in the interval,” Mr. Foster concluded, “we’ve man-
with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the aged to do a lot to them. Oh, a very great deal.” His laugh was
dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes and all knowing and triumphant.
the symptoms of lupus. The hum and rattle of machinery “That’s the spirit I like,” said the Director once more. “Let’s
s faintly stirred the air. walk around. You tell them everything, Mr. Foster.”
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n “Give them a few figures, Mr. Foster,” said the Director, Mr. Foster duly told them.
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t who was tired of talking. Told them of the growing embryo on its bed of perito-
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12 13
neum. Made them taste the rich blood surrogate on which it cases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve
fed. Explained why it had to be stimulated with placentin hundred–that would really be quite sufficient for our pur-
and thyroxin. Told them of the corpus luteum extract. Showed poses. But we want to have a good choice. And of course one
them the jets through which at every twelfth metre from zero must always have an enormous margin of safety. So we allow
to 2040 it was automatically injected. Spoke of those gradu- as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos to develop
ally increasing doses of pituitary administered during the fi- normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every
nal ninety-six metres of their course. Described the artificial twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: they’re
maternal circulation installed in every bottle at Metre 112; decanted as freemartins–structurally quite normal (except,”
showed them the resevoir of blood-surrogate, the centrifugal he had to admit, “that they do have the slightest tendency to
pump that kept the liquid moving over the placenta and drove grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings
it through the synthetic lung and waste product filter. Re- us at last,” continued Mr. Foster, “out of the realm of mere
ferred to the embryo’s troublesome tendency to anæmia, to slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting
the massive doses of hog’s stomach extract and foetal foal’s world of human invention.”
liver with which, in consequence, it had to be supplied. He rubbed his hands. For of course, they didn’t content
Showed them the simple mechanism by means of which, themselves with merely hatching out embryos: any cow could
during the last two metres out of every eight, all the embryos do that.
were simultaneously shaken into familiarity with movement. “We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies
Hinted at the gravity of the so-called “trauma of decanting,” as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future
and enumerated the precautions taken to minimize, by a suit- sewage workers or future …” He was going to say “future
able training of the bottled embryo, that dangerous shock. World controllers,” but correcting himself, said “future Di-
Told them of the test for sex carried out in the neighborhood rectors of Hatcheries,” instead.
of Metre 200. Explained the system of labelling–a T for the The D.H.C. acknowledged the compliment with a smile.
males, a circle for the females and for those who were des- They were passing Metre 320 on Rack 11. A young Beta-
s tined to become freemartins a question mark, black on a white Minus mechanic was busy with screw-driver and spanner on
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n ground. the blood-surrogate pump of a passing bottle. The hum of
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t “For of course,” said Mr. Foster, “in the vast majority of the electric motor deepened by fractions of a tone as he turned
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