Editor’s note: Tessa Huxley, Aldous Huxley’s granddaughter, spoke Aug. 16, 2026, at the 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony to accept the award for Huxley’s classic dystopian novel Brave New World, the 50th work to be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
By Tessa Huxley
For some reason I felt the need to reread Brave New World in February of this year, long before Michael Grossberg wrote to my brother and I regarding the Prometheus Award. Like many of you, I am sure, I had read it as a teenager and again in my late 20’s and in my 30’s.
What really struck me in February was just how incredibly relevant the book is today, in 2026.
FANTASIES OF COMFORT, SELF-OBSESSION
Fantasy seems to be a significant part of so many daily lives and thanks to our “magical” internet we can drown in images of whatever fantasy we are currently having. And now with AI taking over the world, we will have even greater opportunities to ignore the problems of our collective making. Climate disasters, economic collapse, wars: seriously, a little bit of SOMA (name your drug) could be swell. Sound familiar???
I, for one, find our current world filled with vast numbers of people obsessed with self (comfort, pleasure, sex, shopping, acquisition of things, etc). It would seem that Aldous really was spot on in terms of where this world is heading.
As a lifelong political activist, interested in creating community through community gardens, parks, and affordable housing, I have taken a different, less subtle, tack than my grandfather.
Aldous tried to influence people through his writing. Currently, it appears to me that many people are still willing to tolerate totalitarian leaning societies as long as they, themselves, are “comfortable”.
ALDOUS DIDN’T WORK ALONE
I am not a philosopher, a writer nor a social critic therefore I do not indulge in literary criticism. However, I want very much for admirers of Aldous’ work to understand that he did not work alone. Our grandmother, Maria Nys Huxley, was an integral part of Aldous’s work life. Aldous had very poor vision, as a result of illness as a teenager. Maria provided Aldous with a vital link to the world around them.
Maria created a life for the two of them that lasted over thirty-three years. Some of this work was typical for a wife in the 1920s, 30’s. 40’s and 50’s.
But Maria was much much more. She created the “hub” where she brought people to Aldous: providing for both his intellectual and social life which was a true necessity for both his thinking and his writing. She helped Aldous work out his plots, in fact he acknowledged that she was better at figuring them out than he. She typed his manuscripts and provided criticism.
MARIA HUXLEY: AN UNUSUAL WOMAN
Unusual for a woman, Maria was the driver/chauffer which, in the 1920’s, required her to also be the auto mechanic. She drove a Bugatti which was adapted for Aldous’ extreme height leaving only one seat in the back of the car (turned sideways) for our father.
Our mother, Ellen Hovde, used to tell a story about driving in Los Angeles with Maria, dressed, as always in fashionable clothes. Suddenly Maria stopped the car, explaining to her that it sounded “wrong,” opening the hood and making some sort of adjustment and starting off again pleased with the improvement which seemed no different at all to my mother’s untrained ear.
A GREAT LETTER WRITER
Maria was a great letter writer: she would type letters almost as a stream of consciousness and then add handwritten comments in the margins. I have one of her few extant letters as almost all were lost in a fire. (Aldous was trying to put a collection of them together for publication).
Ostensibly it is a cake recipe, however it is continuously interrupted by descriptions of guests wandering in, who might turn up later, etc. Perhaps one could actually bake a cake from the directions but it would be a challenge. That said, a great deal of personal news was conveyed.
In the end, we want to acknowledge that Maria Nys Huxley was an uncredited contributor, of great importance, to Brave New World and that we all have benefited from her devotion to Aldous and his work.
ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards, honor outstanding freedom-loving fantastical fiction and find fellowship with other fans, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each winning work since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both liberty and literary quality.
* Watch videos of the annual Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant elements of libertarian themes and insights in the evolution of the modern SF/fantasy genre.
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