Wells is teaching us to think. Burroughs and his lesser imitators are teaching us not to think. Of course, Burroughs is teaching us to wonder. The sense of wonder is in essence a religious state, blanketing out criticism. Wells was always a critic, even in his most wondrous and romantic tales. And there, I believe, the two poles of modern fantasy stand defined. At one pole wait Wells and his honorable predecessors such as Swift; at the other, Burroughs and the commercial producers, such as Otis Adelbart Kline, and the weirdies, and horror merchants such as H.P. Lovecraft, and so all the way past Tolkien to today's non-stop fantasy worlders. Mary Shelley stands somewhere at the equator of this metaphor. Brian W. Aldiss
About This Quote

The idea that we should always believe in the beauty and wholeness of life and never question it or doubt it was something that was passed down from generation to generation. Like how the sun rises every morning and sets every night, we can't understand how it can work but we know that it does. Our ancestors did not question the laws of nature nor did they try to change them. Life is beautiful and magical but there are times where we must take time to stop and think about how wonderful everything is.

Source: Trillion Year Spree: The History Of Science Fiction

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