| Aldous Huxley, born this day in 1894 in Godalming, Surrey, England, was a novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence. His works were notable for their elegance, wit, and pessimistic satire. Huxley's deep distrust of 20th-century trends in both politics and technology found expression in Brave New World (1932), a nightmarish vision of a future society in which psychological conditioning forms the basis for a scientifically determined and immutable caste system. |