Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright Page A

aftermath, the mood and tone is certainly antithetical to the realism beloved of this narrow school of writing I decry as mainstream. Romances belong in the popular mainstream, which is a different (albeit connected) stream from the literary mainstream.
    I propose that the earliest writer properly called mainstream in both the popular and literary sense was Charles Dickens: and yet his earliest book, and the best remembered title, is his
A Christmas Carol
, which is a ghost story as much as is
Hamlet
, and a time travel story as much as anything by H.G. Wells. So even at this late date in history, the realistic and the fantastic were still Siamese Twins, two parts of the same body.
    Notice that everything before that time, the work of Shakespeare and Dante and Milton and Aristophanes and Euripides and Homer and everything in between was not mainstream, or, rather, there was nothing outside the mainstream. Shakespeare would write about magicians like Prospero as easily as about kings like Richard or braggarts like Toby Belch. Aeschylus could write about Prometheus the titan as easily as about Cassandra the slave-girl. There simply was no division or demarcation between so called realistic and fantastic stories. All stories were realistic; all stories were fantastic.
    What, then, was it that formed what we now call the mainstream? I say it was the Great War. The First World War crippled something in the consciousness of Europe, and in the intellect of the European Intellectuals, and our envious intellectuals in America, seeking for some reason approval from the genius of Europe which we fled here to avoid, followed along like dogs chasing a parade wagon.
    I suggest that the mainstream was not a philosophy, but a feeling or a fashion, that is, an emotional stance that was never put into words. It was a deliberate rejection at first of only the openly fantastic things, dragons and invaders from Mars; then next it was a rejection of the things that are fantastic but which some people take as real, such as ghosts or the sunken continent of Atlantis; and finally a rejection of those things which are fantastic and wonderful in real life, the heroism of ordinary men, the saintliness of ordinary women, not one of whom is truly ordinary.
    Not just men died in the Great War, but an entire social and political system, and, more importantly, a spirit of the nations, a vision and view of life which was their animating principle. Before the Great War, they believed in ideals like nobility and tradition, in the private ownership of property and the duty to serve the public weal. They believed in virgin maidens and faithful wives. They believed in private modesty as well as public pomp, kings and queens arrayed in gold and purple. They believed in the captains of industry and the captains of war, the silk hats and the tin hats.
    Now, if you are a child of the modern age, you are already hearing a voice in your ear, whispering: that the Victorians did not actually believe in chastity, since they had more whores per square mile of London than any era before or since. That nobility is merely the rich grinding the faces of the poor. That pomp is vanity. That industry is plutocracy. That war is hell, and Colonels are devils in hell. And on and on.
    Did you hear it? I would be surprised if you did not. It is in the air we breathe, it is part of our unspoken cultural assumptions. It is the effluvium that rises like a mist from the words and ideas of the mainstream literature, movies and songs and media in which we are immersed and drenched. It is the voice of accusation. It is the voice of division. It is the sneer of scorn.
    The fundamental idea that died in the Great War was the idea of Christianity. That was when God actually died in the soul of European history. By the end of the Second World War, which was actually the second round of the same war, God and His law no longer had the majority influence in shaping the laws and institutions of the