What I’m Blogging

It’s the birthday of Aldous Huxley, born in Surrey, England (1894). Huxley’s own grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, was one of the great scientists of the previous century, a man who helped popularize Darwin’s theories of evolution. Huxley’s grandfather is believed to be the man who coined the word “agnostic,” and he argued that all areas of knowledge would one day come to be understood through science.

…An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex…

Huxley considered becoming a scientist himself, but when he was seventeen years old, he came down with a disease of the eyes, which rendered him almost blind. He learned to read Braille and said he loved it because he could read in bed without getting his hands cold. But since most of his schoolbooks had never been translated into Braille, he had to finish his education by reading everything with a giant magnifying glass. Despite that, his friends all agreed that he was the best-read guy they knew.

His first successful novel was Point Counter Point (1928), about a group of artists and intellectuals who don’t realize that one of the men in their company is a budding fascist revolutionary. Point Counter Point was Huxley’s first best-seller, and since it had been so ambitious a book, Huxley decided that his next book would be something light. He had been reading some H.G. Wells, and thought it might be fun to try to write some science fiction.

The result was Brave New World (1932), about a future in which most human beings are born in test-tube factories, genetically engineered. It was one of the first novels to predict the future existence of genetic engineering, test-tube babies, anti-depression medication, and virtual reality.

Aldous Huxley said, “An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”