7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Oh, Ford.....
Date of Review: Jan 13, 2000
The title of this review actually represents a mild obscenity within the context of the BRAVE NEW WORLD Aldous Huxley describes in this book. It is more than just satire. It is a reminder to look at where we've been (remember that Huxley wrote this book during World War II, when there were certainly people around who knew about the concentration camps and Hitler's eugenics program) and also a reminder to avoid these same mistakes in the future.
At the time I first read this book, the method of reproduction described in this book (oophorectomy - the removal of a fertile woman's ovaries - followed by hormonal treatment to the disembodied ovaries, fertilization of the resulting eggs, then dividing the eggs destined to result in lower classes into as many glass jars as possible and reserving single fertile eggs to grow into the "upper crust" in similar glass jars) was a far-off fantasy. Nowadays, removing the eggs, fertilizing them and reimplanting them (which isn't that different from what Huxley was describing) is done all the time, and it's called in vitro fertilization. Think, also, of all the psychoactive drugs on the market - soma revisited, if doctors are inclined to prescribe things like Prozac and lithium.
This book is a must read for those adults who haven't already been assigned this in high-school or college English courses. Huxley forces the reader to think.
