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I had only read a couple of HG Wells’s science fiction works in condensed versions as a child, but it is impossible to escape a certain awareness of at least four of them, as woven as they are into the fabric of our popular culture. 'The Time Machine,' 'The Island of Doctor Moreau,' 'The Invisible Man,' 'The War of the Worlds' – even if you haven’t read these novellas, you very likely know their essences. A big reason for this is the purity of their concepts. As a pioneer in speculative fiction, Wells homed in on pure premises (“What if we could travel through time?” “What if the distinction between humans and animals was willfully blurred?” “What if we could turn invisible?” “What if an alien race arrived, who were too powerful to be withstood?”), and like Gogol’s overcoat, they – along with the work of Jules Verne and perhaps Hugo Gernsback – seeded an entire new genre in fiction.
When I came across a beautiful volume of Wells’s collected science fiction (there are three additional titles that are not as well known), it was a great opportunity to properly acquaint myself with Wells. I am particularly glad I did so in this manner, because Wells’s science fiction novels make an even stronger impression when taken collectively and in chronological order. The evolution of his ideas, his skill, and his capacity as a writer add another layer to the enjoyment of any of the stories in isolation.
'The Time Machine' is a striking debut, rough around the edges but profoundly strange. The “science” of the machine is dispensed with rather quickly, and the impression is that Wells’s true intent was to speculate on the evolution (or devolution, as it may be) of humans as organisms and as a society. He creates a secular, Darwinian, and even Marxist future in which homo sapien has bifurcated into a surface species and a subterranean one, whose relationship turns out to be not that complicated. The lingering influence of the detritus of earlier civilization has resulted in strange, talismanic echoes that shape the behavior of the surface people as they fail to realize its pointlessness. Most interesting, though, is Wells’s seeming discomfort with gender – Weena, a member of the surface people, is female but interacts more on the level of a child and even a pet, making her an extremely uncomfortable romantic foil for the narrator.
'The Island of Doctor Moreau' is in many ways a recapitulation of The Time Machine. This time it is a destination in geography rather than time that affords Wells his speculative opportunity, but in both cases, a male narrator winds up in an isolated place and encounters a provocative alternative to the norms of his own world. Wells takes even stronger positions on the fragility of civilization, stressing how easily it can erode at any time. Authority may derive from something real, but it can just as easily be arbitrary and insubstantial. There is an echo here of Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein (in Moreau) and an interesting prefiguring of Renfield (in Montgomery) in Bram Stoker’s 'Dracula,' published the following year. To the modern reader, the narrator’s relative comfort with animal vivisection may be the most disturbing element, though apparently the novel served as a catalyst for anti-vivisectionist sentiment in the years after its publication.
'The Invisible Man' is the first of Wells’s works to attain a literary quality, its conceptual ideas rounded out with psychological depth and thematic nuance. There are passing references to both The Time Machine (an aside about the fourth dimension) and Doctor Moreau (an aside about vivisection), and one is practically asked to take a structuralist view of the way these stories represent an evolution. The greater impact of this third story may also derive from its more familiar setting – the invisible man is the only anomaly. As such, Griffin’s complete miscalculation (in developing a power with a serious downside), and the impotent rage and borderline mental instability it engenders in him makes the lasting impression.
By The War of the Worlds, one senses Wells increasing confidence. He increases his scope dramatically, describing a conflict that ranges over a larger landscape with more characters and greater detail. Perhaps by coincidence, the “science” in this fiction is much less compelling than in the previous three stories. Both the technology and the biology of the Martians is rather absurd, but again, that’s not really Wells’s primary focus. Most interesting is the soldier encountered by the narrator late in the conflict, who has envisioned the new world order once the human race has capitulated and is subservient to the Martians. He predicts a reasonably comfortable existence within certain boundaries, at the same time that he lapses into the baser instincts that will render him useless to the invaders. This secondary character might be the most complex of Wells’s constructions thus far.
'The First Men in the Moon' feels like the first real misstep for Wells. It is very much a diluted amalgam of previous stories (the alien race of 'Time Machine,' the futile rage brought on by useless power in the 'Invisible Man,' and the conflict between invader/invaded from 'War of the Worlds') and wades back into a rather heavy-handed treatment of how civilization might evolve along different lines – those lines amounting to an extreme socialism in which the moon people might as well be worker bees in a hive. This book also suffers from an ungainly structure, especially once the rather engrossing first eighty percent is revealed to be the set-up for the much flatter socialist fantasy at the end.
'The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth' returns Wells to his footing and carries him forward. It is as speculative as the previous works, but must subtler, and not nearly as political, despite its political subplot. There are interesting new elements to Wells’s writing here: a light comedic humor particularly at the beginning, a much more ambiguous ending, and most interestingly, the use of allegory. Ultimately Food of the Gods is about the classic generation gap, in which parents work so their children will have more than they did, and then are tempted to resent their children when they see them go further, accomplish more, and threaten the old ways simply by perceiving alternatives.
'In the Days of the Comet,' published eleven years after 'The Time Machine,' is a full order of magnitude greater than that first work. It is the most literary, and on the whole the most subtle of the novels, even as the undercurrent of Wells’s politics finally surfaces completely. It begins with his most assured, most compelling rendering of a character – Willie Leadford, the angry young man who is on his downward spiral as the comet approaches. And Wells has also achieved a new level of control over his plot, finding for the very first time romantic notes in what has heretofore been a notably sexless and un-erotic canon. The hybrid utopia/communism brought about by the comet’s changes to the Earth’s atmosphere is a touch naïve, but Wells has woven his story so skillfully that for the first time the politics feel truly organic, rather than an indulgence. Most interesting might be his take on the new, post-Change interpersonal dynamics, which include polyamory.
A month spent with Wells provides a stimulating history lesson on speculative fiction, and it’s easy to see why so many speculative writers find him a tonic in which to distill their ideas. It is easy to admire the purity of his premises, and instructive to realize that the heart of his stories is invariably the human experience, not the science fiction.
When I came across a beautiful volume of Wells’s collected science fiction (there are three additional titles that are not as well known), it was a great opportunity to properly acquaint myself with Wells. I am particularly glad I did so in this manner, because Wells’s science fiction novels make an even stronger impression when taken collectively and in chronological order. The evolution of his ideas, his skill, and his capacity as a writer add another layer to the enjoyment of any of the stories in isolation.
'The Time Machine' is a striking debut, rough around the edges but profoundly strange. The “science” of the machine is dispensed with rather quickly, and the impression is that Wells’s true intent was to speculate on the evolution (or devolution, as it may be) of humans as organisms and as a society. He creates a secular, Darwinian, and even Marxist future in which homo sapien has bifurcated into a surface species and a subterranean one, whose relationship turns out to be not that complicated. The lingering influence of the detritus of earlier civilization has resulted in strange, talismanic echoes that shape the behavior of the surface people as they fail to realize its pointlessness. Most interesting, though, is Wells’s seeming discomfort with gender – Weena, a member of the surface people, is female but interacts more on the level of a child and even a pet, making her an extremely uncomfortable romantic foil for the narrator.
'The Island of Doctor Moreau' is in many ways a recapitulation of The Time Machine. This time it is a destination in geography rather than time that affords Wells his speculative opportunity, but in both cases, a male narrator winds up in an isolated place and encounters a provocative alternative to the norms of his own world. Wells takes even stronger positions on the fragility of civilization, stressing how easily it can erode at any time. Authority may derive from something real, but it can just as easily be arbitrary and insubstantial. There is an echo here of Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein (in Moreau) and an interesting prefiguring of Renfield (in Montgomery) in Bram Stoker’s 'Dracula,' published the following year. To the modern reader, the narrator’s relative comfort with animal vivisection may be the most disturbing element, though apparently the novel served as a catalyst for anti-vivisectionist sentiment in the years after its publication.
'The Invisible Man' is the first of Wells’s works to attain a literary quality, its conceptual ideas rounded out with psychological depth and thematic nuance. There are passing references to both The Time Machine (an aside about the fourth dimension) and Doctor Moreau (an aside about vivisection), and one is practically asked to take a structuralist view of the way these stories represent an evolution. The greater impact of this third story may also derive from its more familiar setting – the invisible man is the only anomaly. As such, Griffin’s complete miscalculation (in developing a power with a serious downside), and the impotent rage and borderline mental instability it engenders in him makes the lasting impression.
By The War of the Worlds, one senses Wells increasing confidence. He increases his scope dramatically, describing a conflict that ranges over a larger landscape with more characters and greater detail. Perhaps by coincidence, the “science” in this fiction is much less compelling than in the previous three stories. Both the technology and the biology of the Martians is rather absurd, but again, that’s not really Wells’s primary focus. Most interesting is the soldier encountered by the narrator late in the conflict, who has envisioned the new world order once the human race has capitulated and is subservient to the Martians. He predicts a reasonably comfortable existence within certain boundaries, at the same time that he lapses into the baser instincts that will render him useless to the invaders. This secondary character might be the most complex of Wells’s constructions thus far.
'The First Men in the Moon' feels like the first real misstep for Wells. It is very much a diluted amalgam of previous stories (the alien race of 'Time Machine,' the futile rage brought on by useless power in the 'Invisible Man,' and the conflict between invader/invaded from 'War of the Worlds') and wades back into a rather heavy-handed treatment of how civilization might evolve along different lines – those lines amounting to an extreme socialism in which the moon people might as well be worker bees in a hive. This book also suffers from an ungainly structure, especially once the rather engrossing first eighty percent is revealed to be the set-up for the much flatter socialist fantasy at the end.
'The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth' returns Wells to his footing and carries him forward. It is as speculative as the previous works, but must subtler, and not nearly as political, despite its political subplot. There are interesting new elements to Wells’s writing here: a light comedic humor particularly at the beginning, a much more ambiguous ending, and most interestingly, the use of allegory. Ultimately Food of the Gods is about the classic generation gap, in which parents work so their children will have more than they did, and then are tempted to resent their children when they see them go further, accomplish more, and threaten the old ways simply by perceiving alternatives.
'In the Days of the Comet,' published eleven years after 'The Time Machine,' is a full order of magnitude greater than that first work. It is the most literary, and on the whole the most subtle of the novels, even as the undercurrent of Wells’s politics finally surfaces completely. It begins with his most assured, most compelling rendering of a character – Willie Leadford, the angry young man who is on his downward spiral as the comet approaches. And Wells has also achieved a new level of control over his plot, finding for the very first time romantic notes in what has heretofore been a notably sexless and un-erotic canon. The hybrid utopia/communism brought about by the comet’s changes to the Earth’s atmosphere is a touch naïve, but Wells has woven his story so skillfully that for the first time the politics feel truly organic, rather than an indulgence. Most interesting might be his take on the new, post-Change interpersonal dynamics, which include polyamory.
A month spent with Wells provides a stimulating history lesson on speculative fiction, and it’s easy to see why so many speculative writers find him a tonic in which to distill their ideas. It is easy to admire the purity of his premises, and instructive to realize that the heart of his stories is invariably the human experience, not the science fiction.
