Island

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But in the current climate, the novel's warnings about religious fanaticism, the exercise of massive military power, the geopolitical importance of oil and the development of artificial insemination seem extraordinarily prophetic.

Island explores many of the themes and ideas that interested Huxley in the post- World War II decades and were the subject of many of his nonfiction books of essays, including Brave New World Revisited, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, The Doors of Perception, and The Perennial Philosophy.

In 1961, the house he and Laura shared in LA was burned down, but Huxley was able to rescue the manuscript of Island, on which he had been working for five years. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle—the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?

Roarke: Agreed, and while this was an illuminating essay, as a novel, it lacks a clear plot and also many of Huxley’s ideas are only loosely developed and countered with strawman arguments. Reader's noteAldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, poses some interesting questions with this novel. No one should be surprised by the book's conclusion after reading the first 50 pages, but it still existentially disturbed me.

What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history---sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church's inquisitors and crusaders. And sure enough, shortly after he died, Laura received a personal message, to whit: go to the main bookshelf, third row from bottom, and take the second book from the right. In another memorable scene, Will Farnaby watches a Palanese version of Oedipus Rex with a little girl.