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    Ape And Essence
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    Ape And Essence
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    Ape And Essence
    Ebook166 pages2 hours

    Ape And Essence

    By Aldous Huxley

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Similar in theme to his most well-known work Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence is a work of dystopian fiction that looks to critique the rise of global warfare in the modern age. Told in two parts, the novel opens in 1948 with the discovery of a screenplay by two movie industry moguls, who then set out on a journey to find the work’s author, William Tallis. The second half of the novel is dedicated to the screenplay itself, launching the reader into a futuristic Los Angeles that has been ravaged by the events of World War III.

    Vivid in its imagining of a world marked by barbarism and depravity, Ape and Essence offers a sharp critique of the brutal aftermath that war can bring about¬—thus perfectly representing Huxley’s now acclaimed satirical style.

    HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781443428569
    Unavailable
    Ape And Essence
    Author

    Aldous Huxley

    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) is the author of the classic novels Brave New World, Island, Eyeless in Gaza, and The Genius and the Goddess, as well as such critically acclaimed nonfiction works as The Perennial Philosophy and The Doors of Perception. Born in Surrey, England, and educated at Oxford, he died in Los Angeles, California.

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    Reviews for Ape And Essence

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    • 5/5
      A bizarre and unique dystopia set after the WWIII when the mutant remains of mankind (?) are living in a strange, sick society worshipping Belial the Evil...
    • 4/5
      Ape and essence by Aldous Huxley is a bit difficult to get into, but once into the story, this short novel is both interesting and engaging. The narrative structure of the book is unusual, resembling a film script. The beginning of the book consists of a science-fiction account of history, referring to various historical event as they could have happened. The film script, written by a genius, by accident escapes destruction, and is, hence, available to being read.The scripts describes a story in which most of the civilized world has been destroyed in an atomic war, except New Zealand. An expedition from New Zealand reaches the coast of California, to make contact, and investigate the situation in the United States. Having landed, the expedition members are captured, and the leading scientist is brought before the leader of the community. In various exchanges, it becomes clear what has happened, how history in the US developed after the war and various anthropological details of American society of that time are revealed.Ape and essence is a dystopian novel, describing a lapse from civilized society into a barbarous state. While this type of story is now very common, and many films and novels are based on a similar premise, often elaborated along very similar lines, Huxley's Ape and essence is probably the classic that gave rise this this type of genre. The description is more anthropological than contemporary dystopian novels which focus more on horror. Huxley's novel is probably a bit too vanilla for lovers of the genre, and the convoluted beginning of the novel forms an additional barrier. Nonetheless, to lovers of science-fiction, Ape and essence is probably an essential read.
    • 4/5
      The book starts out at a Hollywood studio where a dumptruck bearing rejected movie scripts is headed to the incenerator. One falls out and the author and his friend scoop it up and start to read it. Intrigued they go in search of the author who has since died. The book is a script and it is strange, fascinating, and comical. It was written around the time when the arms race was heating up and the threat of atomic annhilation was (and still is in some respects) all too real.This is but one example of Huxley's expansive imagination.
    • 3/5
      Somewhat interesting and written in Huxley's recognizable style, yet too ham-fisted in making its point. Amusing story if nothing else.
    • 3/5
      Two motion picture executives stumble across a screenplay in the lot. The majority of the book is the text of that document. It is about a future era, post World War III, when the residents of Southern California worship the devil and sex is outlawed except for two weeks once per year. The resulting infants are increasingly more deformed due to radiation fallout. The action of the 'film' seems to be mostly an excuse to espouse the philosophy that human kind, following the Second World War were increasingly destructive and not in cohesion with the Order of Things (i.e. Nature, God, etc.) and that led to their downfall. A lot of the points Huxley makes seem particularly true and relevant even now in the late 2000's. Although the first few chapters were almost incomprehensible to me, due to choppiness, jargon, and references to popular events and figures in the late 1940's, once the narrative turned to the screenplay, it was a fascinating tale. The pop culture references that I didn't really comprehend continued throughout the book, and it's quite possible that I've missed out on a lot of the points that were being made due to my having been born several decades later and not being familiar with those references.
    • 4/5
      Not quite what I expected, based on having read only Huxley's Brave New World, but weird in a charming way.
    • 4/5
      Cruelty and compassion come with the chromosomes

      I've elected to storm into the ranks of Huxley, like a Korean antihero in a Vengeance film. This is a peculiar fruit. There was much from which I recoiled. I feel at moments that History had made the novel look foolish and impotent.

      The reasons to dislike this were Legion
      The novel's thrust is a rejected screenplay
      The narrative then is couched
      in satirical and cinematic terms
      speaking of a future
      a world devastated by nuclear exchange
      Kiwis having no strategic importance
      Set out to trawl the ruins
      Sub-Saharan Africa as well
      Though Huxley leaves us with but
      an ill humored parenthesis
      Back to the New Zealanders
      Broaching the California shores
      100 years after the mushroom clouds
      He finds a strange tribal society
      One worshiping the Diabolical
      For what else could govern their
      Haphazard hungry lives?
      Sex is outlawed except for
      yearly festival of frenzy
      the mutated offspring are
      sacrificed for their inherent
      Misdeed
      There is a classic information dump
      The devil obviously arrived
      in the Scientific Method
      Without a humanizing temper
      Radioactive fallout was Destiny

      It is this final exchange of ideas which redeems the novel, so similar to Brave New World --though here we substitute Shelley for Shakespeare. There is an annoying glibness to this but it appears more a farce than anything meaningful or resonant, whereas the Orgy-Porgy scenes in Brave New World will haunt me forever. There wasn't a corresponding moment in Ape and Essence of the timeless. Parody, just parody.
    • 4/5
      Very striking book. While reading this I wondered why Brave New World got all the attention, the images in this are disturbing and shocking.