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Selected Stories of H.G. Wells

h.g. wells ursula k. le guin

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Ursula K. Le Guin’s selection of twenty-six stories showcases H. G. Wells’s genius and reintroduces readers to his singular talent for making the unbelievable seem utterly plausible.

He envisioned a sky filled with airplanes before Orville Wright ever left the ground. He described the spectacle of space travel decades before men set foot on the moon. H. G. Wells was a visionary, a man of science with an enduring literary touch, and his originality and inventiveness are fully on display in this essential collection.

Including these stories:

“A Slip Under the Microscope”
“The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes”
“The Plattner Story”
“Under the Knife”
“The Crystal Egg”
“The New Accelerator”
“The Stolen Body”
“The Argonauts of the Air”
“In the Abyss”
“The Star”
“The Land Ironclads”
“A Dream of Armageddon”
“The Lord of the Dynamos”
“The Valley of Spiders”
“The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”
“The Man Who Could Work Miracles”
“The Magic Shop”
“Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland”
“The Door in the Wall”
“The Presence by the Fire”
“A Vision of Judgment”
“The Story of the Last Trump”
“The Wild Asses of the Devil”
“Answer to Prayer”
“The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper”
“The Country of the Blind”

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1927

This edition

Format
432 pages, Paperback
Published
July 13, 2004 by Modern Library
ISBN
9780812970753
ASIN
B0092IS1Z2
Language
English

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About the author

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h.g. wells

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Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.

He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.

More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...

http://www.online-literature.com/well...

http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.8 / 5.0, 16 votes)
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16 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
PartTimePoet
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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3.5 A little repetitive in form. However, favourites:

•The Crystal Egg
•Into the Abyss
•The Plattner Story
•The Door in the Wall
•A Vision of Judgement
•The Story of the Last Trump
•The Wild Asses of the Devil
•The Country of the Blind
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LinnHJo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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Some of the stories I enjoyed very much but some were so pointless they were almost a waste of paper. Just because an author is famous doesn't mean you should ransack his office and print anything he ever wrote down.

I would say if you are planning on reading H.G. Wells sit down with one of his novels. They are very short books and a lot more satisfying.
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Hiirokaze
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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Four stars feels fair for what is an excellent collection of short stories. They are old sci-if/fantasy stories; most of the collection is over a century old at this point. This means your mileage may vary depending on your own taste. However, it is interesting to see treatments of stock sci-fi ideas unburdened by precedent even if the writing style is not your speed.

It’s not a good library read. The similarities between the framing stories, which are nearly all “I knew a guy who said he had this bizarre experience and I couldn’t help but believe him despite how crazy it sounded”, gets repetitive if you read them all one after the other.

That said, I liked at least something in all of them. Highlights included :

“A Slip Under the Microscope” - not fantastical, but so human and so relatable
“The Star” - wonderful sense of inevitability for something so short
“The Story of the Last Trump” - I found this crushing on an existential level (in a good way)
“The Country of the Blind” - I agree with Le Guin, probably the best of the bunch

Lastly, I thought Le Guin did a good job highlighting why she picked what she did as well as Whaley she found interesting. I also appreciated the specificity in her introduction about what she likes in Wells. I feel like the temptation for talking about the big names is either hit piece or hagiography. It’s a solid collection.
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The_Game_123
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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2 1/2 stars. Some of the stories were great, a few were ho-hum, and some I skipped because they didn't interest me. The introductions by Ursula Le Guin were very interesting and helpful
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NigmaShady
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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This collection of H. G. Wells is edited by Ursula K. Le Gin and as one would expect it is a great collection and her introductions to the book and its selections are very insightful. The stories themselves are excellent. What surprised me was how many of the stories have vision as a motif. Well's is obsessed with the act of looking and in particular in looking in a new way that reveals the world as it really is. However, his stories thoroughly explore the good and bad points of this, until they climax in what is probably the best story of the collection: The Country of the Blind. It has two endings, the first which is good and a later very different and even better ending.

Many of the stories are actually quite predictive. Other stories in a few pages introduce ideas that have been explored over and over again. Yet other stories remind me of Lovecraft shorn of his cosmic horror. Perhaps that's because Wells writes over and over again from a quasi journalistic rational reasonable stance.

Overall, the collection is constantly fascinating and his genius is on continuous display. Well's is for me the greatest of all Science Fiction writers. Wells is vastly inventive, interested in problematic situations and ideas, able to write a good character and good dialogue. He is to me, the greatest of the science fiction authors and as a good as claim as anyone to inventing the genre. This collection just reconfirms that opinion.
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Lucilar
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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The cover is very inaccurate of his stories but the stories still hold up today rather well.
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veteranweeblife
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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I've read 4 of H.G.'s novels and enjoyed them all. Because of that I was looking forward to this collection of short stories but unfortunately I was disappointed. That isn't to say that the writing isn't good or that others may not like the stories, but for me, they were for the most part, very boring.
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Piezuri
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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...always get mired in his dreadful clunky writing, but always have admired a welter of W's visionary ideas..
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