Description
After learning of atomic physics, H. G. Wells began to think of its potential impact on human society. In The World Set Free, atomic energy causes massive unemployment, shaking the already fragile social order. The ambitious powers of the world decide to seize the opportunity to compete for dominance, and a world war breaks out, echoing the looming Great War about to ignite in 1914. Waking to the catastrophe, humanity begins the hard search for a way into a better future. The novel traces a soldier, an ex-king, a despot, and a sage through a profound transformation of human society, and we gain a window into Wells’ own thoughts and hopes along the way.
With one prophetic stroke, Wells gives the first detailed depiction of atomic energy and its potential destructive power, and predicts the use of the air power in modern warfare. He may have even directly influenced the development of nuclear weapons, as the physicist Leó Szilárd, shortly after reading the novel in 1932, then conceived of harnessing the neutron chain reaction critical to the development of the atom bomb.
Description
The Wonderful Visit is an early work by H. G. Wells, published in the same year as The Time Machine. It takes a gentle, semi-comic approach to some of Wells’ social concerns by using the device of an angel fallen into our world from the Land of Dreams. This external observer, largely ignorant of the ways of humans and our society, is able to focus an unbiased eye on our failings.
The story opens with a strange glare over the little village of Sidderford one night, observed by only a few. But then reports arise of a Strange Bird being seen in the woods. The Rev. Hilyer, the Vicar of Sidderford, is a keen ornithologist. He takes his gun and goes out to hunt this unusual specimen for his collection. He does indeed see a strange flying creature, shoots at it, and brings it down. To his horror, he finds that he has shot and wounded a man-like creature with wings—in fact, an Angel.
The Vicar restores the Angel to health, but finds himself incapable of convincing others that this person really is an angel. The continuing clashes of the Angel’s idealistic points of view with the harsh reality of the human world are the core of this story.
The Wonderful Visit was well-received by critics and Wells’ contemporaries. Joseph Conrad praised it for its imaginative approach in a personal letter to Wells.
Description
H. G. Wells is probably best known for his imaginative longer works, such as his novels The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man; but he was also a prolific short story writer. This Standard Ebooks edition of his short fiction includes fifty-four of Wells’ stories, written between 1894 and 1909 and compiled from the collections The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents (1895), The Plattner Story and Others (1897), Tales of Time and Space (1899), Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1911). They are presented here in approximate order of first publication.
The stories vary wildly in genre and theme, ranging from tales of domestic romance, to ghost stories and tropical adventures, to far-future science fiction. Interestingly, many of the stories deal with the exciting but also frightening prospect of heavier-than-air flight and aerial warfare, and it is worth noting that these stories were written some years before the Wright brothers first took to the air.
Description
Kipps is the story of Arthur “Artie” Kipps, an illegitimate orphan raised by his aunt and uncle on the southern coast of England in the town of New Romney. Kipps falls in love with neighbor friend Ann Pornick but soon loses touch with her as he begins an apprenticeship at a drapery establishment in the port town of Folkestone. After a drunken evening with his new friend Chitterlow, an aspiring playwright, Kipps discovers he is to inherit a house and sizable income from his grandfather. Kipps then struggles to understand what his new-found wealth means in terms of his place in society and his love life.
While today H. G. Wells is best known for his “scientific romances” such as The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau, Wells considered Kipps his favorite work. Wells worked closely with (some say pestered) his publisher Macmillan to employ creative promotional schemes, and thanks to a cheap edition sales blossomed to over 200,000 during the first two decades of publication. It was during this period that his prior futuristic works became more available and popular with American audiences.
Description
Tono-Bungay, published in 1909, is a semi-autobiographical novel by H. G. Wells. Though it has some fantastical and absurdist elements, it is a realist novel rather than one of Well’s “scientific romances.”
The novel is written in the first person from the point of view of George Ponderevo, the son of the housekeeper at a large estate. He is made to feel his inferiority when he is banished after fighting with the son of one of the owner’s aristocratic relatives, and is sent to live with his own poor but religiously fervent relatives. He can’t abide or agree with their religious views and returns to his mother who sends him on to live with his Uncle, Edward Ponderevo, then a local pharmacist in a small town. Uncle Ponderevo, though, has grand plans, and eventually makes a fortune by selling a quack patent medicine he calls “Tono-Bungay.” George joins him in this endeavour and becomes rich himself, eventually turning his interests towards the new science of aeronautics. Meanwhile the Tono-Bungay scheme expands enormously and begins to topple towards its own destruction.
Throughout the novel, George comments cynically on England’s class system, the shabbiness of commerce, and the lies told in advertising. We also follow his unfortunate love life, his unwise marriage, his divorce, and his eventual reconnection with a woman he loved as a child.
Tono-Bungay met with a mixed reception on first release, but has since come to be considered as perhaps Wells’ finest realist novel, an assessment Wells himself shared.
Description
This work by H. G. Wells was first published in 1910. In contrast to Wells’ early speculative fiction works like The Time Machine, this is a comic novel set in the everyday world of the late Victorian and early Edwardian era in England. Despite the less than happy life-story of Mr. Polly, it is an amusing book, enlivened by Polly’s inventive attitude towards the English language.
Alfred Polly’s mother dies when he is only seven, and he is brought up by his father and a stern aunt. He is indifferently educated, and leaves school in his early teens to be employed as a draper’s assistant. As the years pass, he finds himself more and more disenchanted with his occupation, but it is too late to change it. Eventually his father dies and leaves him a legacy which may be enough to set up in business for himself. He sets up his own shop in a small town and stumbles into an unhappy marriage. The business is not profitable, and in his middle-age, unhappy and dyspeptic, Mr. Polly comes up with an idea to bring an end to his troubles. Things, however, do not go as he planned, and lead to an unexpected result.
Wells’ later work often displays his passion for social reform. Here, that passion is less obvious, but nevertheless he demonstrates his sympathy for middle-class people raised like Mr. Polly with but a poor education and trapped into either dead-end jobs or in failing retail businesses.
The History of Mr. Polly was well-received by critics at the time of publication and was subsequently made into both a film and two different BBC television serials.
Description
H. G. Wells’ classic tale of alien invasion has to this day never been out of print. Like many works of the era, it was originally published as a serial—though the publisher, Pearson’s Magazine, demanded to know the ending before committing to publication.
The War of the Worlds, with its matter-of-fact narrative style and deft mixture of contemporary science and fictionalized interstellar war machines, became an instant hit. Its themes of colonialism, social Darwinism, good and evil, and total war still resonate with modern-day readers, so much so that it’s been continuously adapted for screen, radio, television, comics, and print.
Description
Griffin, a scientist, has devoted his life to the study of optics. As his work progresses, he invents a method of making a person invisible. After testing the experiment on himself, he comes to realize that while the experiment was a complete success, he has no way of reversing his invisibility.
Written in a time of rapid scientific progress and industrial development, Wells uses Griffin’s struggle with his condition and descent into obsession and madness to reflect on the dangers of unbridled scientific progress untempered by compassion or humanity.
The Invisible Man was initially serialized in Pearson’s Weekly in 1897, after which it was published as a whole novel that same year.
Description
The Island of Doctor Moreau is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man who finds himself on a mysterious island full of humanoid animal creatures. He comes to find that these creatures are the work of Dr. Moreau, a man who experiments in vivisection, and his assistant Montgomery.
The story of Dr. Moreau’s island began as an article in the January, 1895 issue of Saturday Review. It was later adapted into a novel. Its themes reflect concerns growing in the society of the day, like the cruelty of vivisection, degenerationism, and the theory of evolution.
Description
The Time Machine is the novel that gave us the concept of—and even the word for—a “time machine.” While it’s not Wells’ first story involving time travel, it is the one that most fully fleshes out the concept of a device that can send a person backwards and forwards in time with complete precision. Time machines have since become a staple of the science fiction and fantasy genres, making The Time Machine one of the most deeply influential science fiction novels of the era.