Shakespeare's use of the phrase is intended ironically, as the speaker is failing to recognise the evil nature of the island's visitors because of her innocence. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll.
It has landed on the American Library Association list of top 100 banned and challenged books of the decade since the association began the list in 1990. Despite this, Brave New World has frequently been banned and challenged since its original publication.
In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for The Observer, included Brave New World chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on The Big Read survey by the BBC. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World at number 5 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel is often compared to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (published 1949). Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist. The two landscapes act as a foil, which we talk about more in "Character Roles" (which is tricky of us, since settings aren't characters).Brave New World is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. See where this is going? Finally, as far as a specific setting goes, there's a clear dichotomy between the Savage Reservation and the civilized world. We say, "Thank God!" they say "Thank Ford." We play mini-golf they play Obstacle Golf. It's also the details that allow Huxley to parody our own world so effectively. We start to see how a society like this might function, down to the smallest detail. All this elaborate detail, while sometimes outlandish, makes the idea of a "World State" that much more plausible in our minds. If Brave New World creeps you out, Huxley did his job well. In essence, the more disturbing the setting and the more complete the picture, the more effective the novel. Basically everything you see capitalized has something to do with Huxley setting up an atmosphere for his tale. He provides details about everything from technology (vibro-vacuum massage, scent organ) to professions (Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, World Controller) to down-time activities (Centrifugal Bumble-puppy, anyone?), and from the cityscape (the seven skyscrapers twinkling over Guildford) to individual buildings (The Internal and External Secretions Factory, The Hounslow Feely Studio).
He creates an incredibly elaborate and nuanced setting for his novel. Then we talked to some other friends who are good with numbers, and they came up with 2540 as the year in which Brave New World takes place. We are told in Chapter 3 that the introduction of the first Ford Model-T was year "zero" for this calendar, and our car-fanatic friends tell us that this monumental event happened in 1908 (C.E.). Huxley establishes in Chapter 1 that the year is A.F.