Island
by Aldous Huxley
1962/ 354 pages
rating 4 / sci-fi (utopian world creation)

Well – I certainly can’t say much for this one.  There is only minimal plot and the same can be said for the character development. So what is this? It’s basically a narrative comprised of the social, cultural and intellectual ideas of Aldous Huxley.  He’s created a world,  a little island utopia,  which is threatened by the outside world and the need for oil.   The book is peopled by “types” such as the Rani and her son (pro-oil), the scientists (anti-oil), and Will Faraday, a journalist who comes over for the money but listens and learns about the island – Pala.

Aldus Huxley was ahead of his times,  but between then and now the times he was meant for happened,  and now they are memory.  His thinking became very popular in the late Sixties but he died in 1963.   In this novel Huxley holds forth in a didactic and somewhat arrogant manner – smug.  The book is boring to me now,  but I can see where I might have enjoyed it in 1970 or so –  >>>> MORE>>>>