Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
Began: 12/29/06
End: 01/02/07
Quality: Five Out of Ten.
Reason: Book Club.
Genre: Dystopian Fiction.
Number: Third???

Summary: Quite possibly, the world's most famous dystopian novel. It takes place a few centuries in the future where the entire world is one big happy society run by an extremely efficient world government which has done away with warfare, strife, poverty and unhappiness. Of course, the government has also done away with literature, religion, freedom of thought, the family and quite a few other things that people today find more than slightly important for their happiness. It is a soceity of promiscious sex, rampant use of the drug Soma, exteme materialism and highly stratified society.
The novel has two protagonists, Bernard Marx and John the Savage.
The novel opens with Bernard Marx. He is the highest level of society, an Alpha-plus but is extremely dissatisfied by it for various reasons. This first section of the book seems to set up for the reader the structure of the dystopia. He takes his playmate of the time, Lenina, for a visit to the Savage Reservation where they meet up with John the Savage, who they decide to take home with them.
The sets up the second section of the book, where John the Savage is the protagonist. This section is really John's reaction and critique of this world society.

Here is the quote which the title comes from.
"O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!" -The Tempest, Act V, Scene I.

Thoughts: I have read this a few times. It has been a while. I think I might have been in college, one of the last times that I did take a gander at it. I like it but there seems to be something missing from it. I don't know. It just doesn't completely satisfy me as a work of fiction. It's good. It's a remarkable piece of work but the characters are so underdeveloped and it is such a work of ideas, instead of a work of pure art. It's almost a propaganda piece. It seems to me that it was written to prove a point rather than to tell a good story. I don't know.

Recommendations: I am not sure if I would recommend it to someone. It all depends on who they were and what they were looking for in a book. If they were interested in either dystopian or Utopian fiction, then yes but otherwise probably not.