DECORATIONS

The Future as Nightmare Is annoying In a major respect. Since Wells's rapid reversal about I900 from anti-utopian to Utopian so conveniently puts him on both sides of the issue, and since, In any case, the ground of this shift is the main puzzle of Wells criticism today, It Is disturbing that Mr. Hillegas registers the changeover In silence as to its causes or its significance. One inevitably wonders In just what sense the anti-utoplans are Wellslan and In what sense counter-Wellsian if Wells himself was somehow both. The force of Wells's influence, and of its binocular quality, are not In question here. Mr. Hillegas very fully and convincingly demonstrates the deliberate evisceration of fatbellied Wellslanlsm In the great antl-utoplas; and he is equally authoritative In demonstrating the less obvious fact that, more or less consciously or unconsciously, the anti-utopias (except That Hideous Strength) are derivative in form and in certain important imagery from Wells's early works of cosmic pessimism, the scientific romances. Nevertheless, it Is with some sense of disappointment that one reads at the conclusion of an incontrovertible demonstration of Zamyatln's reverencing of Wells as one who detested regimented Utopian perfection that "Actually, Zamyatln probably did not understand the drift of Wells's work well enough to see that the rationalism and regimentation he opposed in We_ was at least a strong element In Wells's thought." Yes, but when did it become a strong element and how and why? Zamyatln was not wrong If he was thinking primarily of The Time Machine or The Island of Dr. Moreau; nor could it be asserted positively that Wells admires regimentation more than he abhors it even in When the Sleeper Wakes.