Aldous Huxley is one of the great literary names of the first half of the twentieth century, a writer of taste, versatility, and vision, whose novel Brave New World helped shape international public consciousness about the state-sponsored Utopia. He would live a large portion of his life in the American west, notably in Los Angeles, where he would perish.

A member of the distinguished Huxley family, educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, Huxley was a philosopher and essayist of great repute, as much as a popular novelist; a daring thinker and intellectual risk-taker, who, on his death bed, had his wife administer LSD. This is the kind of choice only a sojourner in realms spiritual and intellectual might be brave (and prepared) enough to take. It should be noted that his death occurred on the same day as the deaths of American President John F. Kennedy and scholar and writer, C.S. Lewis.