…Yes. And this is something fairly new, isn't it? I should have thought 20th century. Yes. I think it myself, it begins with H.G. Wells. H.G. Wells was a great utopian. He must have written almost a dozen books that can be called utopian in one sense or…

…this is something fairly new, isn't it? I should have thought 20th century. Yes. I think it myself, it begins with H.G. Wells. H.G. Wells was a great utopian. He must have written almost a dozen books that can be called utopian in one sense or another.…

…a dozen books that can be called utopian in one sense or another. And it seems to me that right from the very beginning, Wells has this double view. I mean, some of his utopias, like Men Like Gods, are positive utopias. And in his first work of…

…it seems to me. I agree. It occurs to me as an idea worth playing with that here, as in so many other things, Wells is a kind of hinge between the age of reason and hope and enlightenment, which, roughly speaking, died at the turn of the century…

…good as this, but if we talk to you as sensible, reasonable human beings, you'll probably move a bit that way. Now, if you jump Wells for the moment, because I said he was a hinge, go to the other side of the hinge and look at somebody we must talk…

…about later, Huxley and Orwell, there you have this shocked... facing of the possibility of a terrifying world. And it's arguable that in Wells, in his own life and in his own books, you can see the tug of the... of the positive progressive... Yes, well…

…the positive progressive... Yes, well this is most interesting because there's that, I think, wonderful piece of science fiction of Wells, The First Men in the Moon, which, if you remember, describes the inhabitants of the moon, they're ants. their society…

…taken down from the shelves. And this now is terrifying because one sees it as a vision of the complete totalitarian state. But when Wells wrote it 50 years ago, it couldn't have been like that at all. It couldn't have read like that. And I think that…

…it 50 years ago, it couldn't have been like that at all. It couldn't have read like that. And I think that one assumes that Wells was terrified, but in fact I think that he was merely playing around with ideas. I think this is true, yes, that in this…

…that he was merely playing around with ideas. I think this is true, yes, that in this sense it's aesthetic, Wells, that he's fascinated by projecting possibilities of scientific development without being closely related to the human weight, the human cost…

…They are, in a sense, I suppose, typical 19th century works, aren't they? Yes, I should have thought that that, we come back to Wells and the Hinge again, that that was about the last point at which any person could be as openly positive in a utopia.…

…new world. Well, this was actually the first motivation for Brave New World was a reaction to a very over-optimistic utopia of H.G. Wells' Men Like Gods, which annoyed me. And I actually began with the idea of writing a parody of this. But then the…

…brave new world. Well, this was actually the first motivation for Brave New World was a reaction to a very over-optimistic utopia of H.G. Wells' Men Like Gods which annoyed me and I actually began with the idea of writing a parody of this but then the…