Seems to me that, despite its popularity, Brave New World is one of those books that you either read in high school or don't read at all (and just pretend to have).
I'll be the first to admit that I didn't read this book growing up. But something told me that I should - and so I did.
The first thing to note about Brave New World, I think, is that it's not perfect. In fact, I found it to be unbalanced. It's a story in search not only of itself, but of a central character. Because whereas the novel ends with the sad demise of the Old World (as manifest in the Savage), it begins with the travails of Bernard, who confronts Huxley's universe in all its awful mechanization.
I'm not sure which story I found more compelling, though there's no denying the power of the Savage's implosion (or was it enlightenment?) toward the end of the book.
And another thing: what's scariest, I think, about this novel is not that we've entered the universe imagined by Huxley (because we have); it's that he imagined that universe when he did, eighty years ago. To me, that's evidence of some sort of visionary.
To close, another thought: I think Huxley resorts at the end of the novel to a dialogue between the Savage and one of the Controllers which is too didactic, too instructive. It's as if Huxley wanted to be sure his readership got it.
Still, despite its shortcomings, this section of the book contains some of Huxley's most scathing (and convincing) criticism of the modern world: namely that we've experienced a shift "from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness." There's no denying this sad fact, I'm afraid.
The last word is reserved for Huxley:
"Actual happiness looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery."
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