Fantasy and the Counter-Culture

By Gary Moffatt

WHAT IS SPECULATIVE FICTION?

Speculative fiction may be defined as any work of imagination which presents the author's thoughts (or speculations) as to our present condition and destination, perhaps contrasting this with alternative possibilities. Today there is a growing interest in forms of media other than print, which may be just as well since man's increasing need to express himself poses a serious threat to our pulp and paper resources. We can therefore consider our definition to include not only prose but also other forms of imaginative expression: art, music, film, etc. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the usefulness of speculative fiction in our search for an alternative way of life. We will start by breaking it down into various categories.

UTOPIAN WRITING

This is the oldest form of speculative fiction, and supplies a common ancestry for modern fantasy writers and builders of an alternate society. We have already traced the evolution of the ideal of community from the purely speculative proposals of such writers as Plato, More, Andreae and Campanella to the early attempts at starting communities by such men as Winstanley and Owen ("Community Heritage," Alternate Society volume 3 number 6.) An article emphasizing the evolution of utopia into modern fantasy would discuss the writing of such early utopists as Sir John Mandeville, whose 14th century account of his travels to the Orient includes such mythical societies as the Bragmen, which maintained no worldly goods on the grounds that "our treasure is the peace and accord and love which has carried the idea of simple living to the point where the pe ople eat nothing at all, but rather live on the smell of apples."

Three centuries later, the French satirist Cyrano de Bergerac left for posthumous publication a description of his visit (via rocket propulsion) to the moon, whose inhabitants have a hundred senses rather than earthlings' five or six, and hence perceive countless realities hidden from mankind. They have come to realize that walking on all fours is natural and healthy, that laws should be made by the young, and that they can be spared the nuisance and noises of digestion by feeding only on vapours pressed from foods rather than the foods themselves. It is unfortunate that Mandeville and de Bergerac left us no indication how we might live on food vapours, since our governments seem determined to leave us very little to live on nowadays. The moon continued to serve many utopists until the 1969 landing brought it all too abruptly into the world of cold reality; in the immediately preceding decades, for instance, a lovelorn songstress had lamented "my sweetheart's the man in the moon" while Dick Tracey spent more and more time with the moon's crimeless society as his creator displayed a growing incapacity to understand the growing crime rate on his own planet.

A century after Cyrano de Bergerac found his ideal society on the moon, Jonathon Swift found his among the horses. The land of the Houyhnhnms which Gulliver visits in the fourth book of his travels, is governed by clean, handsome, genial horses, who speak, reason, and have all the marks of civilization, while their human menial servants, the Yahoos, are dirty, odorous, greedy, drunken, irrational, and deformed. Being reasonable, the Houyhnhnms are happy and virtuous; therefore, they need no physicians, lawyers, clergymen or generals - they are shocked by Gulliver's account of Europe's wars, and still more by the disputes that generated them.

Most utopist writings were coloured by the current progress of science. By the start of the 17th century, European society was already enchanted by the prospect of all man's dilemma's being resolved by science, and this faith was reflected in the utopias of writers as Bacon and Campanella who insisted on their ideal communities making use of modern science and technology, and creating and atmosphere in which these could be extended. Their utopist works might be considered the forerunners of the modern science fiction novel, in that they based their ideal societies on the extension of what was then known about science.

However, the progress of science has always been impeded, first by church leaders who feared the impact of scientific reasoning on their doctrines and forced Galileo to recant. By the time Darwinism had completed the destruction of theological opposition to science, a new opposition had risen based on the fear that science was leading society in undesirable directions. This idea was first popularized by the 18th century French philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau, who suggested that modern man is feeble, anxious and unhappy because his social environment is not suited to his nature. Such an environment could never be found in the large dehumanized urban areas created by the industrial revolution, but only in small communities simple enough to enable each person to take a full and equal part in the government. By the 19th century many other thinkers and writers shared Rousseau's concern over the industrial revolution's social effects, and most utopists apparently agreed with Rousseau that man should return to Eden. Many idealized the old testament concept of Eden before Eve ate the apple, while others returned to Romulus and Remus legend of supermen being raised by animals in a state of nature. Mowgli was raised by a wolf pack, while Tarzan's even more unorthodox upbringing by a tribe of giant apes worked out so well that he taught himself to read between wrestling bouts with man-eating tigers (even the Summerhill kids rarely achieve this degree of self-motivation.) Advocates of so complete a return to a state of nature had much of their ideal destroyed when wild children were actually discovered, though none of these cases were as widely publicized as the Tarzan myth until Trauffant made his recent film L'enfant Sauvage. The ideal of returning to nature still continues, in somewhat modified form, in today's back-to-the-land movement. However, when one compares the rapidly dwindling amount of available land with the equally rapidly increasing population it soon becomes apparent that our offspring have little more chance of making it on the land as with a bunch of gorillas.

Another variant of the back-to-nature utopia is the publication of works by modern pseudo-anthropologists (Desmond Morris' "Naked Ape" being the most conspicuous example) which contend that man is merely an advanced animal who must behave like an animal in all basic instincts, including aggression. All that need be said about this sort of drivel is that the Russian anarchist Kropotkin disproved it fifty years before it was written, giving in his book "Mutual Aid" numerous examples of how plants, animals, primitive societies and our own civilization have survived via cooperation rather than competition.

DYSTOPIAN WRITING

The reverse side of the coin to utopists, the dystopists write not of the pleasant society they believe man could organize but rather the highly unpleasant one they believe present social trends are bringing about. Swift was actually more a dystopist than a utopist; clearly he equates his own society more with the Big-Endians or Little-Endians who fought ruinous wars over whether eggs should be broken at the big end or the small end, than with the virtuous Houyhnhnms. Clearly breaking eggs seems to him no more logical a question to fight wars over than "whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh" (in the Eucharist) or whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine." When Gulliver returns to civilization, he is unable to tolerate the society of his fellow man and spends most of his time in the stables.

The two dystopian milestones of the 20th century are Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. Both forecast present social trends leading a society in which the individual is totally manipulated and controlled, the former through drugs and subliminal advertising, the latter through brute force. Hitherto the establishment has relied mainly on techniques indicated by Huxley: politicians are merchandised and sold like bars of soap, corporations reward orthodoxy and penalize originality, antidrug laws are used to jail young people but not to stop crime syndicates from distributing drugs. There are indications, however, that many people are starting to see through such manipulation. The massacres at Kent and Attica, and last October's mass arrest of Quebec separatists, make it clear that the establishment will use Orwellian tactics to whatever extent the Huxleyan ones fail.

It is notable that almost invariably utopias are set in the country or in small communities, dystopias in large cities. Few of our speculative writers have yet to come to grips with the obvious fact that overpopulation makes in inevitable that we must devise utopias compatible with high density population or not at all. Attempts to face this problem were made in the form of various proposals to start garden cities which were popular in Britain since the turn of the century, but in practice most attempts were defeated by the depression of the 1920s and the later bureaucratic interference of the government. A few modern cities have coped with such obvious problems as the traffic menace, but could hardly be said to have tackled the major problems of high density living. Perhaps one reason is that, unlike the rural utopists, they have few speculative writers to turn to for guidance.

Although many modern writers share Yeat's willingness to rise and go to Innigisfree within themselves (particularly if deprived of the artificial stimulation of drugs) and to devise means of turning to their present surroundings into Innigsfree. An island that could be successfully defended from a swelling population in today's militarist framework would bear less resemblance to Innigsfree than Formosa.

Fantasists reject the real, day-to-day world in order to create one out of their imagination. Most utopists are fantasists, the exceptions being those rash enough to start communities where their utopias can be realized. Charles Fourier, a French anarchist of the early 19th century, was one of the more inspired fantasists; he created his cosmology in which the stars and planets, sentient beings like ourselves with similar passions, fall in love and reproduce their kind. Planets have a life span of 80,000 years, divided into 32 phases. Earth is now in its fifth phase; when we reach its eighth in a few thousand years, we will enter a period of Harmony with certain evolutionary changes; men will grow tails equipped with eyes, animals will become peaceful, the sea will turn into lemonade and so forth. Fourier was also an inspired utopist, whose proposals for 1600-member communities (which he called phalanxes) contained more details for accommodating man's diverse interests and passions than any other utopian scheme before or since. Even the preoccupation of small children with dirt was to be utilized by making them the garbage collectors. Unlike many utopists, he rejected the principle of equality in order to reward people according to their contributions. After his death, attempts were made to start phalanxes, most of which adopted his economic proposals but failed to attain the 1600 people he recommended and hence were unable to follow his recommendation that each person change task at least once a day. Although his system was never given a fair chance to be worked out, he had demonstrated that ability to fantasize and to devise ideal communities often go hand in hand.

The most popular fantasies are generally those involving some sort of hero endowed with above-extra strength either through natural selection (Conan or Thongor just happen to be stronger than any of the foes they are pitted against) or through some special dispensation of nature (Superman comes from another planet; the Fantastic Four acquire their peculiar talents through accidental exposure to cosmic rays.) Unlike the heroes of detective stories, none of the super-heroes are very clever intellectually - the only partial exceptions are those who, like Gandalf or Mandrake the Magician, spend years studying the arts of magic, and even they need an Aragorn or a Lothar around to do their muscle work for them. Usually, the villain in the fantasy story is considerably brainier than the hero. Rather than proceed to a battle of wits unarmed, the hero uses strong-arm methods to attain his ends. Thus, he identifies with the modern Everyman baffled by a society out of control who longs to be able, like Conan, to cut the Gordian knot with a sword. Subconsciously or otherwise, modern fantasy upholds the values of simplicity and a strong arm (hard work?) against those of technocracy. Occasionally they may go hand in hand - in Flash Gordon we see an effective alliance of a simple-minded athlete, a beautiful if rather dumb girl and a paunchy scientist, while Thongor finds the wizardry of Sharajsha useful in overcoming various forces of darkness. But then Sharajsha, like Mandrake and Gandalf, represent a branch of science which most scientists hold in disrepute - had they really existed they would undoubtedly have been incarcerated along with Cagliosostro, or at the very least drummed out of the garden of academia with Velikovsky. The super-hero usually works alone - or, if he must have a companion, he selects one inferior to himself: an unliberated female (Tarzan's Jane, Superman's Lois Lane) or a young boy (Batman's Robin) depending on his taste.

Another characteristic of the heroes of fantasies is their inability to acquire roots. This particular problem of the 20th century was first noted by American writers who preferred to spend the twenties wandering about Europe rather than going home (Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is as good a chronicle of this lost generation as any.) By the thirties, we have Simone Weil writing of our need for roots while Thomas Wolfe discovers that "you can't go home again." The fantasists also reflect this problem; Conan is never able to settle down with the grateful people whose monster he has slain, Frodo and Gandalf are so worn out after saving the world from Mordor that they can only sail out (unlike Tennyson's Ulysses) to an unspecified Haven, Brick Bradford constantly steers his time-top into new orbits. Even if they have a home, they don't manage to spend much time there. Poor Tarzan is unable either to settle down with Jane or to respond to the amorous opportunities his wanderings occasion (at one point during the film series RKO tired of his sexual hang-ups and tried to solve the problem by killing Jane off; they had gone so far as to film a touching graveside scene before an outraged public forced them to cancel this expedient and scrap the film.)Later films kept Jane discretely out of sight, though her presence still hovers about somewhere, in case embarrassing questions should be asked about Tarzan's television relationship with a young boy. We are left to ask who is worse off: Tarzan with his Paradise Lost or Conan who, never having had a home, follows a love-em and leave-em policy. If old soldiers never die, what happens to old super-heroes? Lucky for them, they're ageless.

A few years ago, the greatest danger in outgrowing childhood was losing the ability to fantasize. Today there is the greatest danger that we may deprive our children of it too. For example, when the Ontario Teachers' Federation compiled a list of standards for school libraries, one of their recommendations was that only ten per cent of a public school's library collection should be fiction. With scientific advances increasing the pressure to jam more and more facts down junior's throat, it may be inevitable that this will be done at the expense of leaving him less time and facilities to exercise his imagination (a growing tendency of middle-class parents to program their children's time also contributed to this problem.) Television has reduced children's imaginative powers by occupying all their senses, rather than requiring them to fill in the unoccupied ones for themselves as did print and radio. Television also imposes a standardization of fantasies (three channels to choose from as opposed to thousands of books), and these standardized fantasies are subjected to the same commercial pressures which dictate the rest of the boob tube's subject matter. It is not difficult to draw a connection between deprivation of fantasy in childhood and the use of hallucogenic drugs in adolescence to make up for it.

The global villages has also made heavy inroads on fantasy. In 1931, Josef Von Sternberg wished to make an escapist adventure potboiler for Marlene Dietrich in a setting totally removed from reality, where imagination could be given free rein. He decided to set it on an express train from Peking to Shanghai; since neither him nor Marlene or most of the people likely to see the film had been anywhere near China, there was no need at all to hamper with the story with any sort of geographical authenticity. Shanghai Express is still cherished by film buffs who prefer the thirties' approach of escaping social problems via fantasy than the sixties' approach of rubbing our noses in them. Three years later Milton Caniff began his popular comic strip Terry and the Pirates in a similar setting. A decade or so later it was no longer possible to set a fantasy in China, not only because the little red book left little to the imagination but also because, despite the travel ban, our factual ignorance of what is happening in China had been destroyed. Soon the entire cosmic system was following the globe into implosion; in the thirties most science fiction novels were set on Mars, Buck Rogers was fighting off catlike Martians every day in the papers and Orson Welles demonstrated how close we were to believing our illusions. Today most science fiction is set in mythical planets of imaginary solar systems, the only refuge left to the imagination. Conan and the hobbits can still romp about on our own planet prior to recorded history, though the archaeologists are constantly reducing their turf.

Our section on fantasy has talked largely about superheroes and sorcerers because most of the other varieties fall more precisely under another category of speculative fiction. Actually, of course, all the works discussed in this article are fantasies. Save for a small minority who are gutsy (or foolhardy) enough to go out and try to turn their imagined paradises into reality, fantasy is our only escape from an increasingly unliveable, dehumanized environment. Hopefully, fantasy will stimulate rather than substitute for our willingness to experiment with new life styles. We must constantly remain open to new alternatives, agreeing with Gunter Anders that our unreal, inverted utopia cannot continue to exist due to conflict with the forces of nature, while that which we call utopia and often consider idealistic is actually reality. We must develop more utopias, more alternative realities, if we are to survive. We can no longer afford to pray, as somebody or other publicly did, for the strength to change what can be changed, the patience to bear what cannot be changed and the wisdom to know the difference. We must regard all components of our present lifestyles as subject to change as soon as better ways can be found. Finding better ways will require speculative writers to propose alternatives and a counter-culture to sift through their proposals through the crucible of experience. Print can stimulate the imagination to a greater extent than the audio-visual media, and prose fiction will continue to fill a vital need. Hence it will survive McLuhan, television and the teacher's federation.

SCIENCE FICTION

Science fiction may be defined as that branch of fantasy concerned with predicting future living environments by projecting possible advances in one or more of the sciences. Since sociology and psychology have been granted the dubious distinction of being considered as sciences, this opens a pretty wide field. Most science fiction is optimistic or pessimistic according to the author's outlook on science as a curse or a blessing. Isaac Asimov recently found (Magazine of Science of Fantasy and Science Fiction no. 222) only two scientific discoveries in history which could have been used for destructive purposes - the "Greek" fire with which Constantinople was successfully defended from the Arabs in the 7th century and the poison gas used by both sides during World War One. Nonetheless, the tendency we have already noted for part of society to regard scientific progress with the trepidation was clearly reflected in the early science fiction novels. In 1818 the teen-aged Mary Shelley published her novel Frankenstein concerning a young scientist who found the means to create a human being artificially. Frankenstein's monster (unlike Universal's), which limited Boris Karloff to few rather emotional grunts) could rattle lengthy paragraphs of articulate prose, most of which were directed towards condemning Frankenstein for having created a creature doomed to suffer loneliness. Rejected by society because of his deformities, the monster attempted to achieve recognition by systematically murdering Frankenstein's family. A pre-Freudian age was quick to condemn such behaviour as antisocial, and the moral of the tale was that the doctor had erred in probing forbidden knowledge. A similar lesson was drawn from Robert Louis Stevenson's story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which once again, a well-meaning scientist inadvertently creates a lethal monster (in this case himself.) Jules Verne's Captain Nemo uses his skills to give himself personal power, which is used for questionable purposes despite his obvious good intentions. In 1921 came Karel Capek's play R.U.R., which invented the name and concept of robots and went on to predict their replacement of the human race. In his subsequent robot novels, Asimov advanced the notion not to kill human beings (his famous "first law of robotics"), but in view of the utilization of our other scientific discoveries to destroy people we don't like this hope seems rather forlorn.

Thus, science fiction writing prior to the late 1930's and mostly pessimistic. At this time, however, the more intelligent fantasy readers were starting to tire of super-heroes fighting off green Martians and a number of writers began applying scientific principles to their fantasy (such people as Heinlein, Sturgeon and Asimov achieved instant success in this manner.) Today science fiction is a recognized branch of literature, and several of its writers have achieved the physical security which accompanies a university teaching position. After attending the recent fourth Secondary Universe Conference in Toronto, one is rather inclined to feel sorry for their students. Mostly, the conference consisted of people reading papers. The luckier readers were given time to field one, two, or three quick questions from the floor; the majority were hustled off the platform before even this could be done to make way for the next speaker. Of course, one could always follow them into the lobby to continue this discussion at the cost of missing several subsequent papers, though many of the papers were too dry to kindle much of a desire for further discussion. If we grant the seemingly obvious fact that it would have made much more sense to print up the papers ahead of time and mail them to participants to read in advance, thereby using the conference's limited time for questions and discussion, we are struck by a paradox: a group of people in the vanguard of speculative thinking about the future who have not yet learned to utilized the medieval intention of printing.

Among the least interesting papers at the conference were those which attempted to define what science fiction is or should be. Clearly science fiction will be whatever is accepted by the genre's attempt to limit or control its will be met with the indifference it deserves. If the conference was any indication, there is danger that science fiction's love affair with the universities will make it as dull as everything else they absorb.

Among the most interesting papers were those genuinely concerned about our scientific age's tendency to (as one speaker put it) shrivel our sense of wonder and make man the measure of all things. Such speakers saw a positive role science fiction can play in shaking man from being over-serious and helping teenagers to re-assert wonder; to do this, it must be formative and creative rather than what it is likely to be. Alternative social systems, rather than technological psychological factors only, must be considered.

CULTURE SHOCK

The culture shock school of speculative fiction is that which has taken up the challenge of analyzing our social system by comparing it to another. This can be done by comparing present-day civilization to that of another period in our history (usually through the device of time travel) or to that of an imaginary civilization, either by placing a refugee from our civilization in theirs (or vice-versa) or by ignoring our own system entirely and letting the reader make his comparisons for himself as he goes along. In any case, the result is to shock the reader into re-evaluation of some of our society's premises by contrasting them to other possibilities.

Pioneers in this type of novel were H.G. Wells in Britain and Mark Twain in the USA, both writing around the turn of the century. A utopist concerned about the direction in which society's assumptions about were leading it, Wells challenged many of these assumptions: in The War of the Worlds, for example, he attacked man's concept of himself as the pinnacle of evolution by pointing out that we have no idea what forms of life exist elsewhere in the universe or even our own galaxy; what happens if they turn out to be more highly evolved than ourselves? When man's technology has failed to stop the invaders, they finally succumb to an elementary force which man shares with dumb animals and takes for granted, the constituency of the atmosphere. Twain, in Tom Sawyer and more specifically in Huckleberry Finn, pleads eloquently for allowing children to follow their natural instincts and inclinations rather than subjecting them to the increasing pressures of technological society (a plea which has been ignored; children of the poor grow up in soul-destroying slums while those of the middle class have their imaginations systematically destroyed in our schools.) In a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, apparently the first time-travel novel ever written, Twain takes another swipe at technological society by contrasting it with that of the sixth century, which ultimately rejects the gifts technology brings them. Shortly afterwards Wells also wrote a time travel novel, and the format of contrasting cultures became a popular one.

The culture shock novel took different paths in Britain, which was in the process of divesting itself of its empire, and the USA which was in the process of acquiring one. British speculative fiction tends to be democratic, to probe society's sacred cows critically in the tradition of Wells (her best-known modern speculative writer, John Wyndham, wrote the same sort of novel Wells had produced for a previous generation, except that the concepts were up-dated to be relevant to the atomic age.) In the USA Jack London, having paid due homage to Darwinian concepts of survival of the fittest in his dog stories, turned in The Iron Heel to apply them to the class struggle. He predicts a violent revolution, lasting for centuries, which ends in the triumph of the working class over the oppressors. Writing a little later than Marx he is able to foresee the establishment buying off organized labour, but underestimates the effect this will have in undermining the reformist tendencies of the labour movement as a whole. He also underestimates the potentialities of thought control and manipulation. Few modern speculative writers in the USA have shared his faith as Asimov and Heinlein predict societies in which the masses are manipulated by small groups of clever people, and what revolutions occur do so when the manipulators lose their cleverness and responsiveness to current conditions, and are replaced by others who are more efficient.

The major revolt against this acceptance of conformity and manipulation has come in so-called youth culture, with its emphasis on bright colours, psychedelic sights and sounds, eastern religions and mind expansion. The youth culture's disinterest in social and political issues has caused many to brand it as irrelevant, particularly those who still hope for change along Marxist lines. Such critics miss the point entirely. The youth culture has come to realize the importance of Socrates' dictum "know thyself"; only by better comprehending their own reality can they begin to come to grips with larger problems. Less consciously than the counter-culture but with at least equal determination, the youth culture emphasizes the small group which can practise participatory democracy and create an atmosphere conducive to individual growth. To a large part this is counter-acted by individual needs for popularity and hence conformity, but we are nonetheless left with a life-style much more in harmony with current ecological needs than that of the establishment generation. Speculative writing, which gives us a chance to see how life would be under different circumstances, offers us much greater avenues to explore our own reality; therefore, it is more widely read than Marx and Mao.

PRODUCT OF ITS TIME

Speculative fiction is usually rooted in the time and place in which it was written. Take, for instance, the legendary folk-heroes which our various fantasy heroes the qualities of a strong back and a weak mind which were deemed essential to fulfill their county's ambitions. Beowulf and Siegried are too busy slaying dragons to philosophize; Robin Hood labours to get John off England's throne and Richard back on it with the same lack of consideration as to whether one is really better than the other we note in the hacks of modern political parties. When heroes substitute imagination and craftiness for brute strength, as to the Greek gods or Norway's Peer Gynt, they usually belong to nations which are resigned to being small and insular rather than those seeking empire. When the USA went after an empire following the Second World War, it had to get rid of Abraham Lincoln as its folk hero and put Davy Crockett in instead.

Speculative fiction is usually rooted in the time and place in which it was written. Take, for instance, the legendary folk-heroes which our various fantasy heroes the qualities of a strong back and a weak mind which were deemed essential to fulfill their county's ambitions. Beowulf and Siegried are too busy slaying dragons to philosophize; Robin Hood labours to get John off England's throne and Richard back on it with the same lack of consideration as to whether one is really better than the other we note in the hacks of modern political parties. When heroes substitute imagination and craftiness for brute strength, as to the Greek gods or Norway's Peer Gynt, they usually belong to nations which are resigned to being small and insular rather than those seeking empire. When the USA went after an empire following the Second World War, it had to get rid of Abraham Lincoln as its folk hero and put Davy Crockett in instead.

In the middle ages, the dominant theme was stability, there was little room for imagination and speculative fiction was almost non-existent. A sceptical public rejected Marco Polo's description of the orient and tossed him into jail; there was no time frame of reference to enable them to distinguish between his writings and Maudeville's. Largely due to the spread of ideas which followed the invention of printing, this stability was on the way out by 1500. Belief in the supernatural, commonly reflected in the folk literature of the middle ages, was still evidenced in the Shakespearean plays and witch-burnings of the 16th and 17th centuries, but eventually this also fell before the onslaught of the age of reason. (Since superstition generally impeded rather than enhanced the imagination, we may regard this as a Good Thing.) During modern history, each century has had its own peculiar characteristics and speculative fiction has generally either reflected or reacted against these trends, as follows:

16th century: rise of nation state and imperialism produces a reaction from speculative writers who propose utopias based on small co-operative communities. The most famous of these, that of Thomas More, proposes a rudimentary system of socialism.

17th century: spread of scientific knowledge and the Protestant ethics of austerity and hard work reflected in literature: Bacon and Campanella uncritically accept science as a cornerstone of their utopias; Shakespeare speaks of nature with affectionate nostalgia but his characters invariably abandon it when they get opportunity to return to court; Milton sacrifices art in favour of heavy-handed moralizing; Johnson satirizes greed with which man expects science to make him rich (The Alchemist) but suggests no alternative ethic. What reaction there is against social trends takes the form of excessive romancing (Lovelace) or wild fantasizing (de Bergerac).

18th century: the elegance and ostentation of the rich becomes more and more contrasted with the misery of the poor, whose displacement from the land by the enclosure movement is completed. There is considerable literary reaction: Swift and Rousseau express pessimism as to human destiny if we continue pursuing false ideals; poets like Blake and Wordsworth extol the concept of return to nature and simplicity. Unfortunately, most of the literary reaction is liberal; such writers as Voltaire attack individual social abuses but fail to see underlying patterns.

19th century: perhaps because of this basis in liberalism, most of the writers cop out when the reactionary crunch comes (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey.) Most 19th century writing reflects commonly-held belief colonialism is great and society can evolve to perfection by maintaining her existing institutions (Browning, Tennyson, Kipling.) A few writers are interested in speculative fiction which rejects centralization and technocracy (the Shelleys, Stevenson, Twain, Wells.)

20th century: a period of general breakdown, world wars and the death of God. The fine arts divorce themselves from the people, turning inwards towards their own elite. (Picasso, most modern composers and poets.) Popular arts take their place (cinema, comic strips, spectator sports) but increasingly dominated by financial interests and tend to suppress innovate talent. This produces a reaction: Brechtian, underground and guerrilla theatre; underground press etc. Print remains the media most available to those who wish to spread new ideas. Speculative fiction becomes a popular art form with the development of paperbacks, and helps spread a variety of new ideas, although most writers seem sceptical of mass democracy and unable to devise a workable alternative. Suggested solution: a fusion of speculative fiction with anarchist analysis.