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. ( )

--I am a doctor in a uncivilized land full of apes, with nothing to do but observe the brutes in their natural habitat and hope that I will remain intact to tell the story.--

--I have fallen in love with the most charming brute but i'm sure she is more.--

--I have escaped the land of the brutes with my lover and will never return-- ( )

Ape and Essence is a brief, bizarre, and ludicrously overwritten work of dystopian fiction. The book follows the discovery and full recital of a mysterious play; a play which was almost certainly written by Huxley while under the influence of a particularly foul hallucinogenic substance. Serious fans of Huxley and the dystopian sub-genre of science fiction may find the book worth pursuing, but I cannot honestly say that I would recommend it to any man, woman or child... ( )

Very striking book. While reading this I wondered why Brave New World got all the attention, the images in this are disturbing and shocking. ( )

Basically, this is the dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley that isn't "Brave New World." The bulk of the novel is told in the form of a screenplay saved from the incinerator by a writer and his producer. It tells the tale of a future world where nuclear war has claimed most of the planet. In 2108, an expedition from New Zealand (the only country spared destruction, basically because no one cared to bomb it) lands on the Southern Californian coast to do scientific research. One of the members is taken captive by a tribe of mutated survivors who worship a devil-like figure named Belial. His life basically goes downhill from there.

From this somewhat meager plot, Huxley is able to extract thoughts on the nature of human progress ("the theory that Utopia lies just ahead and that, since ideal ends justify the abominable means, it is your privilege and duty to rob, swindle, torture, enslave and murder all those who, in your opinion (which is, by definition, infallible), obstruct the onward march to the earthly paradise.") and human knowledge ("what we call knowledge is merely another form of Ignorance--highly organized, of course, and eminently scientific, but for that very reason all the more complete, all the more productive of angry apes.") all very thought provoking and all very cynical. While the story is somewhat slim (there's a reason "Brave New World" is the classic rather than this) the imagery and ideas are compelling enough to make it worth the time of anyone who wants to look deeper into the Huxley's fascinating back catalog.

(This review originally appeared on zombieunderground.net) ( )