Brave New World

“The effect of Darwin Bonaparte’s film was immediate and enormous. On the afternoon which followed the evening of its release John’s rustic solitude was suddenly broken by the arrival overhead of a great swarm of helicopters.
He was digging in his garden—digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death—and he drove in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and at last . . . He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true—truer somehow than truth itself. And yet the same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and that thou oft provok’st; yet grossly fear’st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade stuck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams? . . .”

Read by B.Wendt
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: HarperCollins, 1932.