Aldous Huxley

British · b. 1894

Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in four months in 1931, betting that the future would control people through pleasure rather than pain — engineered contentment, endless distraction, a perfect drug. Novelist, essayist, and late-life psychedelic pioneer, he politely told his former student George Orwell why comfort would beat the boot; the scoreboard still argues his side.