Crome Yellow

Aldous Huxley's first, yet little-known, sci-fi satire novel (1921) is one of the first four of a series of re-found treasures that changed the landscape or boundaries of genre fiction, repackaged with stunning new cover designs.
Invited to spend part of the summer at Crome, a country estate, Denis Stone arrives by train carrying a draft of his first novel, which he intends to complete during his stay. There, he quickly falls in love with the young Anne Wimbush, herself enthralled with the painter Gombauld. Faced with disillusionment and disappointment, Stone struggles to write while being subjected to pseudo-intellectual conversations, lengthy public readings, and devastating characterizations by the guests and hosts of Crome. This novel predates Brave New World by just over a decade, but the seeds of prescient ideas from that groundbreaking work weave in and out of Crome Yellow--babies grown in bottles, people bred to lifelong tasks according to a prearranged regime, birth control, free love, hierarchies of intellect, and so on appear fully formed as passing dialogue.