H(erbert) G(eorge)
Wells (1866 - 1946), the British author and sociologist started a life-long love affair
with literature when he suffered a broken leg as a child. His fiction was
influenced by his studies with the biologist T. H. Huxley and his concern for
the fast-changing world around him. His best works are impressive and gripping
and include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). Wells explores the fate of humanity in
a world of rapid scientific and technological change. His later work focused on
social commentary and maintained a pessimistic view of humanity's future. Wells
and Jules Verne often criticized each other; Wells for his flexible
use of scientific truth and Verne for his emphasis on mechanistic science
rather than storytelling. Wells has the distinction of introducing the Martian
to American fiction. This article was written by Knowledgerush
staff or contributed by users. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Herbert George Wells (September 21, 1866 - August 13, 1946) was an English writer best known for his science fiction novels such as The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine).
Herbert George was the fourth and
last son born at 47 The High Street, Bromley, Kent to Joseph Wells, a former domestic gardener and at the
time shopkeeper and professional cricketer and his wife Sarah Neal, a former
domestic servant and occasional housekeeper. Both parents were members of the
working class. They were earning a meager income that
helped support their family for several years.
A
defining incident of young Herbert George's life is said to be an accident he
had in 1874 at the age of eight years old. The accident left him for a time with a
broken leg. To spend his time he started reading and soon became a devoted bibliophile. Later that year he entered the Academy of
Thomas Morley, presumably named after Thomas Morley (1557/1558 - 1602) a noted composer of madrigals. He studied in the Academy till 1879. But in 1877 another accident had affected his life. This time it had happened to
his father and left Joseph Wells with a fractured thigh. The accident
effectively put an end to Joseph's career as a cricketer and his earnings as a
shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss.
In 1879 Joseph and Sarah had to withdraw their son from the Academy. No longer
able to support their sons financially, they instead sought to set each of them
as apprentices to various professionals. At the time it was a usual method for
young employees to learn their trade working under a more experienced employer.
In time they should be able to practice their trade for themselves. From 1880 to 1883 Herbert George had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper. His
experiences were later used as inspiration for his novel Kipps, which described the life of a draper's
apprentice while also being a critique of the world's distribution of wealth.
During those years he was a well-known resident of Sandgate.
In 1883 his employer dismissed him, claiming to be dissatisfied with him. The
young man was reportedly not displeased with this ending to his apprenticeship.
Later that year, he became a teacher at Midhurst Grammar school, until he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science, now part of Imperial College) in London, studying biology under T. H. Huxley. As an alumnus, he later helped to set up the Royal College of Science Association, of which he became the first president
in 1909. Herbert George studied in his new school until 1887 with an allowance of 21 shillings a week thanks to his scholarship.
He
soon entered the Debating Society of his school. This years mark the beginning
of his interest in a possible reformation of society. At first approaching the
subject through studying The Republic by Plato, he soon turned to his contemporary ideas of socialism as expressed by the recently formed Fabian Society. He was also among the founders of "The Science School
Journal", a school magazine which allowed him to express his views on
literature and society. The school year 1886 - 1887 became the last year of his studies. Having previously successfully
passed his exams in both biology and physics, his lack of interest in geology resulted in his failure to pass and the loss of his scholarship.
Herbert
George was left without a source of income for a while. His aunt Mary, a cousin
of his father, invited him to stay with her for a while. So at least he did not
face the problem of housing. During his stay with his aunt, he grew interested
in Isabel Mary Wells, her daughter and his cousin.
H.
G. Well's first bestseller was Anticipations, published in 1901. Perhaps his most
explicitly futuristic work, it bore the subtitle "An Experiment in
Prophecy" when originally serialized in a magazine. The book is
interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of
population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and
women seek greater sexual freedom) and its misses ("my imagination refuses
to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder
at sea.")
His
early novels, called "scientific romances", invented a number of themes now classic
in science fiction in such works as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds and are often thought of as being
influenced by the works of Jules Verne. He also wrote other, non-fantastic novels
which have received critical acclaim, including the satire on Edwardian
advertising Tono-Bungay and Kipps.
Though
not a science-fiction novel, radioactive decay plays a small but consequential
role in Tono-Bungay. It plays a much larger role in The World Set Free, published in 1914. This book contains what is
surely his biggest prophetic "hit." Scientists of the day were well
aware that the slow natural decay of radium releases energy at a slow rate for
thousands of years. The rate of release is too slow to have practical
utility, but the total amount released is huge. Wells' novel revolves
around an (unspecified) invention that accelerates the process of radioactive
decay, producing bombs that explode with no more than the force of ordinary
high explosive--but which "continue to explode" for days on end.
"Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier
twentieth century," he wrote, "than the rapidity with which war was
becoming impossible... [but] they did not see it until
the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands." Leo Szilard acknowledged that the book inspired him and
led to his discovery or invention of the nuclear chain reaction.
Wells
also wrote non-fiction. His classic two-volume work The Outline of History (1920) set a new standard and direction for popularised scholarship. Many
other authors followed with 'Outlines' of their own in other subjects. Wells
followed it in 1922 by a much shorter popular work, A Short History of the World. The 'Outlines' became sufficiently
common for James Thurber to parody the trend in his humorous essay An
Outline of Scientists.
From
quite early in his career, he sought a better way to organize society, and
wrote a number of Utopian novels. Usually starting with the world rushing to catastrophe, until
people realize a better way of living: whether by mysterious gases from a comet causing people to behave rationally (In the Days of the Comet), or a world council of scientists
taking over, as in The Shape of Things to Come (1933), which he later adapted for the 1938 Alexander Korda film, Things to Come. This depicted, all too accurately, the
impending World War, with cities being destroyed by aerial bombs.
Wells
contemplates the ideas of Nature vs Nurture and
questions humanity in books like The Island of Dr. Moreau. Not all his scientific romances ended in a
happy Utopia, as the dystopian
When the Sleeper Awakes shows. The Island of Dr. Moreau
is even darker. The narrator, having been trapped on an island of animals
vivisected (unsuccessfully) into human beings, eventually returns to
He
called his political views socialist, and with his fondness for Utopias, he was
at first quite sympathetic to Lenin's attempts at reconstructing the shattered Russian economy, as his account of a visit (Russia in the Shadows 1920) shows. But he grew disillusioned at the doctrinal rigidity of the Bolsheviks, and after meeting Stalin grew convinced the whole enterprise had gone horribly wrong.1
In
1927, Florence Deeks sued Wells for plagiarism, claiming
that he had stolen much of the content of The Outline of History from a work she had submitted to
Macmillan & Sons, his North American publisher, but who held onto the manuscript
for eight months before rejecting it. Despite numerous similarities in phrasing
and factual errors, the court found Wells not guilty.
In
1938, he published a collection of essays on the future organization of
knowledge and education, titled World Brain, including the essay The Idea of a
Permanent World Encyclopaedia.
In
his later years, he grew increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for
humanity, as the title of his last book, Mind at the End of its Tether suggests. His later books are often
thought to do more preaching than storytelling or lack the energy and invention
of his earlier works. One critic aptly complained: "He sold his birthright
for a pot of message" 2
A partial listing of
his works:
· The Time Machine (1896)
·
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
·
The War of the Worlds (1898)
·
The Scepticism of the Instrument: A portion of a paper read to the
Oxford Philosophical Society, November 8, (1903)
·
In the Days of the Comet (1906)
· A Modern Utopia (1908)
· Ann Veronica (1909)
· Tono-Bungay (1909)
·
The History of Mr Polly (1910)
·
The Outline of History I, II 1920, 1931, 1940 (1949, 1956, 1961, 1971)History of
Life and Mankind
· Men Like Gods (1923)
·
The World of William Clissold (1926)
·
Mr Blettsworthy
on Rampole Island (1928)
·
The Shape of Things to Come (1933)
His
autobiography was published in 1934, as An Experiment in Autobiography.
1 For examples of his contemporaries'
wilful disregard of the failings of the Soviet Union, see the book Political Pilgrims by Paul Hollander.
2 I thought Theodore Sturgeon had coined the "pot of message"
remark, but on rereading the source (a Sturgeon short story from 1948 entitled Unite and Conquer) find that a character in the story
was quoting a "Dr. Pierce" with that remark. Wherever it came from,
it's a perfect description of why his later books weren't as good as the early
ones.
H.G. Wells – Biography, Works,
and Message Board
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/biography/76/H._G._Wells/
29-10-08
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