Brave New World

By: Aldous Huxley

Narrated by: Michael York

Length: 8 hrs

Publisher's Summary

When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.

On the 75th anniversary of its publication, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before. Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media: has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 A.F. (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.

©1932 Aldous Huxley; 1998 BBC Audiobooks America (P)2003 BBC Audiobooks America

Critic Reviews

"British actor Michael York's refined and dramatic reading captures both the tone and the spirit of Huxley's masterpiece." ( AudioFile)

Michael York should stick to the stage and leave narration to the pros.

Do you like having one of your favourite books of all time ruined by a pompous Brit who thinks he’s performing Shakespeare? Do you love having to constantly turn up the volume so you can hear unnecessarily exaggerated whispering, only to have your eardrums blown when the narrator unexpectedly
switches to shouting at the top of his lungs like a lunatic? Well then, this beautiful story being ruined by the over the top performance of Michael “Head So Far Up His My Ass” York is for you.

Great Story, Distracting Narration

The narrator's large shifts in volume and multiple British accents detracted from the overall experience.

the narrator sucked

it was a hard listen just because the narrator wasn't my favorite person to listen to. the shot was annoying, but maybe that's what they were shooting for.

I am I, and I wish I weren't.

I read the first page of this book easily 15 times in high school but never got past the buttery light on the microscopes.

I decided to listen to this now after reading an article quoting Neil Postman about how this book was the more apt to happen in our society than 1984. I agree- we' be anesthetized at an orgyporgy choking back Soma long before we give up the free press.

I enjoyed this book especially listening to Michael York read it but docked a star for the interminable polemic sections and how tedious the reservation section became.

“Oh, Ford, Ford Ford, I Wish I Had My Soma!”

Brave New World is a bitterly funny and humorously tragic dystopian novel in which Aldous Huxley satirizes modern civilization’s obsession with consumerism, sensual pleasure, popular culture entertainment, mass production, and eugenics. His far future world limits individual freedom in exchange for communal happiness via mass culture arts like “feelies” (movies with sensual immersion), the state-produced feel-good drug soma, sex-hormone gum, popular sports like “obstacle golf,” and the assembly line chemical manipulation of ova and fetuses so as to decant from their bottles babies perfectly suited for their destined castes and jobs, babies who are then mentally conditioned to become satisfied workers and consumers who believe that everyone belongs to everyone. In a way it’s more horrible than the more obviously brutal and violent repression of individuals by totalitarian systems in dystopias like George Orwell’s 1984, because Huxley’s novel implies that people are happy being mindless cogs in the wheels of economic production as long as they get their entertainments and new goods.

Michael York does a great job reading the novel, his voice oozing satire for the long opening tour of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and then modifying in timbre and dialect for the various characters, among them the self-centered brooder Bernard Marx, the budding intellectual poet Helmholtz Howard, the sexy, sensitive, and increasingly confused Lenina Crowne, the spookily understanding Resident World Controller of Western Europe Mustapha Mond, and especially the good-natured, sad, and conflicted Shakespearean quoting “savage” John.

I had never read this classic of dystopian science fiction, so I’m glad to have listened to this excellent audiobook, because it is entertaining and devastating in its depiction of human nature and modern civilization, especially timely in our own brave new Facebook world.

Terrible reading

Don't listen to this with headphones. The reader goes from reading to yelling countless times. Besides that he gives some characters a Scottish type accent and other ones one that makes them sound mentally disabled. The book it's self is alright but at certain times jumps around randomly.

Hedonist Nihilism and the Centrifugal Bumblepuppy

"O brave new world, that has such people in it!"
Shakespeare's The Tempest

I was enraptured while reading this remarkable futuristic fable of a society somberly envisioned as one of hedonist nihilism in which humans are all hatched from incubators, graded, sorted, brainwashed and drugged to accept their position in the social order.

In doing a bit of research about the novel after reading it, I found this candescent passage from the late Neil Postman, a social critic and distinguished professor, comparing 1984 with Brave New World:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. ... Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

N. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.


I found this novel quite frightening in the longer view (compared to 1984) considering, as Christopher Hitchens so rightly pointed out, that 1984's "house of horrors" showed its weakness with the downfall of the Soviet Union, whereas Huxley's type of Brave New World "still beckons toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus," a "true blissed-out and vacant servitude" for which "you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught." C. Hitchens, "Goodbye to All That: Why Americans Are Not Taught History." Harper's Magazine, Nov. 1998.*

Nightmare-Inducing (in a Good Way)

When I first read Brave New World it gave me nightmares. I was hooked. It might be strange to say that a book that gave me bad dreams is a good thing, but I was intrigued that a story could worm its way so powerfully into my psyche. It was really my first encounter with dystopian speculative fiction and I ultimately credit Huxley with sending me on my recent nosedive into YA lit. He probably wouldn’t appreciate this association, or the one I’m about to make, which is that I think this book is one of the most powerful and accessible works of dystopia ever created, and can be seen as a forebear to much of today’s hottest literature.

Sometimes when I’m not sure what I want to listen to next I’ll return to a book that I loved fervently in print and check it out in audio, and that’s what I did with Brave New World. I’m so glad that I did. Michael York is an excellent narrator and he captures the different characters admirably. But what I found most impressive is how he handles dialogue. Brave New World is more than dystopian sci-fi; it’s a novel of ideas and discussion. There’s a lengthy rapid-fire debate that takes place between John the Savage and Mustapha Mond near the end of the book that is generously peppered with obscure Shakespearian references. When reading you can gloss over anything you do not get immediately because you understand the merit of their discussion: is it better to be happy and controlled, or is the freedom to be unhappy the greatest of human liberties? But I found while listening that Michael York carried me along through their debate and the individual Shakespearian references sang clearly. Just as seeing a play acted out on stage is easier than reading it, I really feel that listening to this book was a heightened experience, and an improvement on the print version. Now when I recommend Brave New World to people I suggest they listen to it first.

And I’m going to recommend it again now: There’s a reason this is a classic, and read by most freshman English students. If somehow you’ve missed it, now is the time to pick this one up.

Stick with it!

After only a few chapters into Brave New World, you will be so shocked and appalled that you may feel inclined to emphatically put it down and disconnect yourself from it for the fear that someone else will overhear the spill of your headphones. I challenge you to keep reading; although it never explains itself in a way that eases our consciences, it categorically forces you to reconsider every quantum of morality and ethics you possess. Once done, you will certainly not agree with the hypothetical future set forth by Aldous Huxley, but you will understand why not, and thus have a far more solid foundation for why you believe what you believe.

unfinished business.

I couldn't finish listening as the Narrators performance was dry and voice was droning. it's a shame, I've heard good things about the book

Can't get into it because of nonsensical narration

I'm sure there is a classic novel hidden beneath the very poor, laughable and jarring narration. Weird use of random accents makes the characters more like caricatures, and the random shouts & whispers make this almost unlistenable.
I would urge Audible to re-record this with a more proficient narrator.

Marred by narration

Great book, no doubting that, but I'm half way through and had to break to come on here and say I can't STAND Michael York's narration. Really after 20 audiobooks or more from Audible this is the first time it's happened, and it's particularly surprising given he's such a well known actor, but absolutely every moment of his performance is over-egged. It's Jackonory story-telling, subtle as a brick and prone to spasms of indulgent and frankly frightening wailing and crying. And the accents, entirely his contribution from what I gather, are atrocious. I'm probably in the minority given other reviews here, but give the sample a go and try before you buy, that's my advice!

Sublime

I have never posted a review before, as I have never felt strongly enough, in either direction, to want to make a public comment on something - until now. It is more years than I care to remember since I last read Brave New World, and what a delight to listen to Michael York as the narrator. For anyone who thinks that they 'ought to' read this book, then this is the perfect way to do it; and anyone who wants to revisit this timeless classic, then you are in for a sublime 8 hours. If only all audio books were of this standard.

Dreadful narration.

Although I have read this book years ago, and know it to be excellent, I just can't deal with the narrator on the Audible version.

Apart from the fact that his admittedly perfectly enunciated voice conveys none of the darkness of the book, the high pitched, shouty dialogue of the characters he attempts to portray are ridiculously theatrical, and quite frankly are just making my head hurt. He's like Calculon from Futurama, but even more hammy.

I am returning this one, I'm afraid.

Imaginative, But Flawed!

Set sometime in the distant future (A.F. 632 which may translate to around 2540 A.D. according to some calculations), in an advanced dystopian world; this was at times a fascinating but challenging listen. However, I could not help feeling somewhat disappointed by the end as I did not find it to be the classic that it was alleged to be.

Often compared to Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", but very different in terms of the worlds both authors so carefully constructed, I found Huxley’s style of writing at times to be overly verbose and difficult to follow. It also made me wonder at times how far he was trying to exhibit his own philosophical beliefs at the expense of the plot and overall story.

I found nearly all the characters unlikeable. Naturally, the only ones I truly sympathised with were John and Linda. No doubt this was deliberate on Huxley's part, as to an outsider looking into this so called "civilised world" where people had been conditioned to show no real lasting unity to one another, you could only feel appalled at their self-centredness. John the Savage (as he was unfairly referred to), represented our world and programming, and his reaction to the likes of Lenina and some of the lower caste members and their behaviour was at times desperate, but understood.

When you take a step back and take it all in, the world Huxley created here is truly frightening, but nonetheless captivating.

Finally, I found Michael York's narration rather strange and somewhat irritating at times. Some of his choice of accents for the characters were quite bizarre and not well thought out (Bernard's and John's especially), and kind of took some of the gloss off of this work.

what an amazing book!

I simply could not believe that a book as prescient as this was written in 1931 / 1932. This gets to the heart of so much that is wrong in our own era and reads like a creepy but amazing prophecy speaking into all the problems of our age.

Interesing characters and ideas of the future.

Michael York makes listening to this book very easy.

The story portays a world where human engineering has advanced so far that children are grown in test tubes rather than born naturally. Distinct classes of people are manufactured in the test tube. Love and partnerships no longer exist as everyone belongs to everyone else. Subliminal teachings repeat the mantras of the new world order, ensuring stability and conformity. Drugs are freely available to wash away any hardship or stress. Gone are the writings of Shakespeare and all references to God.

But there are a few that are not content with the way of the world and look for answers to their feelings of emptiness.

The story follows these characters through their journey of self realisation and weakness, exploring the state's reaction to their outspoken views.

I really enjoyed the story and considering its age was impressed by the forward thinking.

Poor Narration

The story is excellent and is both thought provoking and amusing. However, the narration lets this book down. Michael York makes every character sound like something out of an Aardman Animation.

Excellent

Bleak and excellent. An interesting thought experiment. As opposed to Orwell's "1984", in which a totalitarian government rules by fear and brutality, the Brave New World leaders remain in power by enslaving their population to unbounded, self-indulgent pleasures. All humanity is lost when grief, pain and suffering are eradicated, and the book cleverly introduces a 'savage' from an 'old world' reserve who understands the loss that the new world has undergone. Despite it's cautionary tone (that seems to be more relevant in this day and age than when it was written) I couldn't help feeling I could do with just a little bit of unbounded, self-indulgent pleasure. Huxley would turn in his grave!! Clear sound and excellently narrated.

Memories

I first read this book 25 years ago at school. Time (or my age) has made this book even better! Well read by Michael York. If you like George Orwell's 1984, you'll love this.