In 1958, Aldous Huxley published a collection of essays on the same social, political, and economic themes he had explored earlier in his novel Brave New World. Although the form differs — the work is nonfiction instead of fiction — Huxley's characteristic intelligence and wit enlivens the essays of Brave New World Revisited just as it did in his novel.
Brave New World has been called a "novel of ideas," because Huxley takes as his primary focus for the fiction the contrast and clash of different assumptions and theories rather than merely the conflict of personalities. In Brave New World Revisited, Huxley dispenses with the fictional construct altogether and lets the ideas themselves form and inform his work. In a sense, then, Huxley opened his debate about the future in fiction — for artistic purposes — and then continued it in philosophy with persuasion in mind.
Part of Huxley's reason for "revisiting" the themes of Brave New World stems from his horrified recognition that the world he created in fiction was in fact becoming a reality. In the depths of the Cold War, a totalitarian world state — a Communist dictatorship, perhaps — seemed a distinct possibility; and so, with the world on the verge of destruction or tyranny, Huxley felt compelled to search for and find the hope for freedom missing in his novel.
