Ape and Essence (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Aldous Huxley
- First Published: 1948
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—post-holocaust
- Time of Work: 1948 and 2108
- Setting: Los Angeles, California, and the Mojave Desert
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Sex or sexuality, Future, 1940’s, California, Los Angeles, West, U.S., Assassination, Pacific Northwest, Devils or demons, Nuclear warfare or weapons, Deserts, Worship
- Locales: Los Angeles, CA, Mojave Desert, CA
The Plot
Ape and Essence begins in 1948, in an office at a Hollywood film studio. Screenwriter/director Bob Briggs is recounting his marital and financial woes to an unnamed narrator. Unconcerned with Bob’s troubles, the narrator contemplates the recent assassination of Mohandas K. Gandhi and the relationship art and science have to politics and commerce. The narrator’s philosophy holds that the ideals of order and perfection are the aesthetics of tyranny and that nationalism and politics are corrupting forces. Gandhi died, the narrator decides, because he became...
[The entire page is 1012 words long]
