ABSTRACT
This is Mr. Huxley's most important novel since Time Must Have a Stop. He has been working on it for a long time and when he spoke to me about it several years ago,1 he gave me the impression that it formed a companion piece to Brave New World, that the earlier novel depicted the horrors of a scientifically planned society, organised to obtain maximum efficiency, and that the new one was to expose a purely humanistic society selfishly centred upon the pursuit of happiness. This was a misconception. The islanders of Mr. Huxley's new novel are not wrong in a different way to the Brave New Worldlings; they are right. That is to say as right as Mr. Huxley can make them and because right, virtually defenceless against the inevitable take-over from East or West.
