阿道司·赫胥黎Aldous Huxley, 1894~1963,英国作家,出生于萨里郡的名门:父亲是xx兼诗人,母亲是批评家马修·阿诺德Matthew Arnold的侄女,著有天演论Evolution and Ethics的大生物学家托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎Thomas Henry Huxley是她的祖父。赫胥黎从小受到良好的教育,早年入伊顿公学,计划从事医学,因严重眼疾而辍学,后入牛津大学攻读文学并开始创作诗歌。赫胥黎学识渊博,作品众多,共创作11部长篇小说、7部短篇小说集、9部诗集,同时还创作了剧本、文艺评论、游记、传记,和哲学、宗教、政治、科学等各类散文。她的作品内容包罗万象,包括当代文明的各个主要方面。让她名留青史的小说漂亮新世界Brave New World发表于1932年,和乔治·奥威尔George Orwell的19841984、叶夫根尼·扎米亚京Yevgeny Zamyatin的我们We并称为“反乌托邦”三大经典作品。赫胥黎于1963年11月22日逝世,享年69岁。 Excerpts1 A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay2 figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness3 responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance. “And this,” said the Director4 opening the door, “is the