Fiction And Time II

In Fiction And Time, I contrasted Dornford Yates with Poul Anderson in the belief that Yates mourned the passing of a society divided into aristocrats, their faithful servants and deferential peasants whereas Anderson anticipated different possible futures.

However, in a novel published in 1954, Yates, through the mouth of his character, Mansel, presents this anticipation:

"'In twenty or thirty years, the process of levelling down will be complete. That is, if no catastrophe occurs. Nothing worth having will be left. There'll be no one and nothing to look up to, no examples to follow, nothing whatever to strive for except existence itself. Life will be painfully dull. And those in power will treat all the others like dirt. And then, after much tribulation and many years, the great days will come again.'"
-Dornford Yates, Ne'er-Do-Well (Cornwall, 2001), p. 11.

That last sentence sounds like the "The world's great age begins anew..." (see here) of the Polesotechnic League and the great wealth and ostentation of its merchant princes.

But what of the rest of Mansel's prediction? Is there nothing worth having, no one and nothing to look up to, no example to follow, nothing to strive for except existence? Is life painfully dull? Are we treated like dirt? (Sometimes.) Might a catastrophe occur? (Unfortunately, yes.)

Anderson's Technic civilization emerges form the Chaos but he also wrote dystopias.

Addendum: Mansel, some of us want to level up, not down, and are very far from succeeding as yet. I would love to argue this in the Old Phoenix but not in the Wet Flag!