Encyclopedia
Herbert George Wells was a
British writer best known for his
science fiction novels such as
The Time Machine,
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction [i] novel [i] written by H. G. Wells [i] and published in ...
,
The Invisible Man, and
The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken
socialist. His later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today.
Biography
Early life
Wells was the fifth and last child of Joseph Wells, a former domestic gardener and at the time shopkeeper and
cricketer, and his wife Sarah Neal, a former domestic servant. He was born at Atlas House, 47 High Street, Bromley,
Kent. The family was of the impoverished lower-middle-class. An inheritance allowed them to purchase a china shop, though they quickly realised it would never be a prosperous concern. The stock was old and worn out, the location poor. They managed to earn a meagre income, but little of it came from the shop. Joseph sold cricket bats and balls and other equipment at the matches he played at, and received an unsteady amount of money from the matches, for in those days there were no professional cricketers, and payment for skilled bowlers and batters came from passing the hat afterwards, or from small honoraria from the clubs where matches were played.
A defining incident of young Wells' life is said to be an accident he had in 1874 when he was seven years old. He was dropped on a tent peg at the local sports ground and was left bedridden for a time with a broken leg. To pass the time, he started reading and soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access; they also stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he entered Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy, a private school founded in 1849 following the bankruptcy of Morley's earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells said later, on producing copper-plate handwriting and doing the sort of sums useful to tradesmen. Wells continued at Morley's Academy until 1880. But in 1877 another accident had affected his life. This time it had happened to his father, leaving 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.
No longer able to support themselves financially, they instead sought to place their boys as apprentices to various professions. 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 practise their trade for themselves. From 1881 to 1883 Wells had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium. His experiences were later used as inspiration for his novels
The Wheels of Chance is a comic novel [i] by H. G. Wells [i]. ...
and
Kipps, which describe the life of a draper's apprentice as well as being a critique of the world's distribution of wealth.
Wells's mother and father had never got along with one another particularly well , and when she went back to work as a ladies maid one of the conditions of work was that she would not have space for husband or children; thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives, though they never divorced and neither ever developed any other liaison. Wells not only failed at being a draper, he also failed as a chemist's assistant and had bad experiences as a teaching assistant, and each time he would arrive at Uppark – "the bad shilling back again!" as he said – and stay there until a fresh start could be arranged for him. Fortunately for Wells, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself.
Teacher
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 an assistant teacher at Midhurst Grammar School, in
West Sussex, until he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science 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. Wells studied in his new school until 1887 with an allowance of twenty-one shillings a week thanks to his scholarship.
He soon entered the Debating Society of the school. These 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 and free lectures delivered at Kelmscott House, the home of
William Morris. 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 was 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.
Wells was left without a source of income. 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 her daughter, Isabel.
Marriage and liaisons
In 1891 Wells married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells, but left her in 1894 for one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins, whom he married in 1895. He had two sons by Amy: George Philip in 1901 and Frank Richard in 1903.
During his marriage to Amy, Wells had liaisons with a number of women, including
American birth control activist
Margaret Sanger. He had a daughter, Anna-Jane, with writer Amber Reeves in 1909 In spite of Amy Catherine's knowledge of some of these affairs, she remained married to Wells until her death in 1927.
Game designer
Seeking a more structured way to play war games, Wells wrote
Floor Games followed by
Little Wars .
Little Wars is recognised today as the first
recreational wargame and Wells is regarded by gamers and hobbyists as "the Father of Miniature Wargaming."
Writer
Wells' first bestseller was
Anticipations, published in 1901. Perhaps his most explicitly futuristic work, it bore the subtitle "An Experiment in Prophecy" when originally serialised in a magazine. The book is interesting both for its hits and its misses .
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 is a science fiction [i] novel [i] written by H. G. Wells [i] and published in ...
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.
Wells also wrote several dozen short stories and novellas, the best known of which is "The Country of the Blind" . Besides being an important occurrence of blindness in literature, this is Well's commentary on humanity's ability to overcome any inconvenience after a few generations and think that it is normal.
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 is a novel published in 1914 [i] by H. G. Wells [i]. ...
. This book contains what is surely his biggest prophetic "hit." Scientists of the day were well aware that the 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's novel revolves around an 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."
Leó Szilárd acknowledged that the book inspired him to theorise the nuclear chain reaction.
Wells also wrote nonfiction. His bestselling two-volume work
The Outline of History began a new era of popularized world history. It received a mixed critical response from professional historians, but was praised by
Arnold J. Toynbee as the best introductory history available. 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, and two long efforts,
The Science of Life and
The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind . The 'Outlines' became sufficiently common for
James Thurber to parody the trend in his humorous essay
An Outline of Scientists - indeed, Wells's
Outline of History remains in print with a new 2005 edition while
A Short History of the World has been recently reedited .
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 realise a better way of living: whether by mysterious gases from a
comet causing people to behave rationally , or a world council of scientists taking over, as in
The Shape of Things to Come is a work of science fiction [i] by H. G. Wells [i], published in 1933,...
, which he later adapted for the 1936 Alexander Korda film,
Things to Come is a 1936 British [i] science fiction film [i], produced by Alexander Korda [i] ...
. This depicted, all too accurately, the impending
World War, with cities being destroyed by aerial bombs. He also portrayed social reconstruction through the rise of
fascist dictators in
The Autocracy of Mr Parham and
The Holy Terror .
Wells contemplates the ideas of nature vs nurture and questions humanity in books like
The Island of Doctor Moreau. Not all his scientific romances ended in a happy Utopia, as the dystopian
When the Sleeper Wakes shows.
The Island of Doctor Moreau is even darker. The narrator, having been trapped on an island of animals vivisected into human beings, eventually returns to England; like
Gulliver on his return from the Houyhnhnms he finds himself unable to shake off the perceptions of his fellow humans as barely civilised beasts, slowly reverting back to their animal natures.
Wells also wrote the preface for the first edition of W. N. P. Barbellion's diaries,
The Journal of a Disappointed Man, published in 1919. Since Barbellion was the real author's pen-name, many reviewers believed Wells to have been the true author of the
Journal; Wells always denied this, despite being full of praise for the diaries, but the rumours persisted until Barbellion's death later that year.
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,
The Web, she had submitted to the Canadian Macmillan Company, 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 organisation of knowledge and education, titled
World Brain, including the essay
The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia.
Near the end of the Second World War Allied forces discovered that the
SS had compiled lists of intellectuals and politicians slated for immediate liquidation upon the invasion of England in the abandoned Operation Sea Lion. The name “H.G. Wells” appeared high on the list for the "crime" of being a
socialist. Wells, as president of the International
PEN , had already angered the
Nazis by overseeing the expulsion of the German PEN club from the international body in 1934 following the German PEN's refusal to admit non-
Aryan writers to its membership.
Political efforts
Wells called his political views socialist, but he occasionally found himself at odds with other socialists. He was for a time a member of the Fabian Society, but broke with them as he intended them to be an organization far more radical than they wanted. He later grew staunchly critical of them as having a poor understanding of economics and educational reform. He also ran as a Labour Party candidate for
London University in 1922 and 1923, but even at that point his faith in that party was weak or uncertain.
His most consistent political ideal was the World-State. He stated in his autobiography that from 1900 onward he considered a world-state inevitable. The details of this state varied but in general it would be a planned society that would advance science, end nationalism, and allow people to advance solely by merit rather than birth. He also was consistent that it must not be a democracy. He stated that in the same period he came to realize a world-state was inevitable he realized that parliamentary democracy as then practiced was insufficient. HG Wells remained fairly consistent in rejection of a world-state being a parliamentary democracy and therefore during his work on the
United Nations Charter he opposed any mention of democracy. He feared that the average citizen could never be educated or aware enough to decide the major issues of the world. Therefore he favored the vote be limited to scientists, organizers, engineers, and others of merit. At the same time he strongly believed citizens should have as much freedom as they could without consequently restricting the freedom of others. These values came under increasing criticism from the 1920s and afterwards.
That said he remained confident of the inevitability of a planned world state well into the 1930s.
Lenin's attempts at reconstructing the shattered
Russian economy, as his account of a visit shows, also related towards that. This is because at first he believed Lenin might lead to the kind of planned world he envisioned. This despite the fact that he was a strongly anti-Marxist socialist who would later state that it would've been better if
Karl Marx was never born. The leadership of
Joseph Stalin led to a change in his view of the Soviet Union even though his initial impression of Stalin himself was mixed. He disliked what he saw as a narrow orthodoxy and obdurance to the facts in Stalin. However he did give him some praise saying, "I have never met a man more fair, candid, and honest" and making it clear that he felt the "sinister" image of Stalin was unfair or simply false. Nevertheless he judged Stalin's rule to be far too rigid, restrictive of independent thought, and blinkered to lead toward the Cosmopolis he hoped for.
In the end his political importance was almost negligible. His efforts to help form the
League of Nations became a disappointment as the organization turned out to be a weak one unable to prevent
World War II. The war itself increased the pessimistic side of his nature. In his last book
Mind at the End of its Tether he considered the idea that humanity being replaced by another species might not be a bad idea. He also came to call the era "The age of frustration." He spent his final years venting this frustration at various targets from the
Roman Catholic Church to a neighbor who erected a large sign to a servicemen's club. As he devoted his final decades toward causes which were never truly realized this caused his literary reputation to decline. One critic complained: "He sold his birthright for a pot of message" That being said
The Happy Turning, a short book from 1944, contains a great deal of wit and imagination.
Legacy
In his lifetime and after his death, Wells was considered a prominent socialist thinker. In later years, however, Wells' image has shifted and he is now thought of simply as one of the pioneers of science fiction; Newt Gingrich, former
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and staunch Republican, praised Wells in his book
To Renew America, writing "Our generation is still seeking its
Jules Verne or H.G. Wells to dazzle our imaginations with hope and optimism".
Wells also has the distinction of being, albeit indirectly, the creator of the
mecha genre of science fiction and animation. Some of the first mecha, the Martian Tripods, appear in War of the Worlds.
Appearances in other contexts
H. G. Wells has been portrayed in a number of films and television programmes, including:
- The Doctor Who is a long-running British [i] science fiction television [i] ...
serial Timelash is a serial [i] in the British [i] science fiction television [i] ...
. - Film maker George Pal hinted as Wells being the Time Traveller: He's referred to as ' George ' and the Machine's nameplate reads ' Manufactured by H. George Wells ' - The Time Machine 1960
- The novel and motion picture Time After Time, he is played by British actor Malcolm McDowell, where he chases Jack the Ripper after the latter steals his time machine and escapes to 1979-era San Francisco.
- A semi-recurring character in .
- The novel The Time Ships, by British author Stephen Baxter, was designated by the Wells estate as an authorised sequel to The Time Machine, marking the centenary of its publication, and features characters, situations and technobabble from several of Wells' stories, as well as a representation of Wells .
- In C. S. Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength is a novel [i] by C. S. Lewis [i] first published in 1945 [i]. ...
, the character Jules is a caricature of Wells, and much of Lewis' science fiction is written both under the influence of Wells and as an antithesis to his work. - Wells' photo appears on a stairway wall of time traveller Alex Hartdegen's NY brownstone, in a 2002 version of The Time Machine, directed by Wells' great-grandson Simon Wells.
Arthur Sammler, the main character of
Saul Bellow's
Mr. Sammler's Planet, knew Wells, and is urged by other characters to use that fact as the basis for writing a biography of Wells, a project about which
Holocaust survivor and a self-made philosopher Sammler has decidedly mixed feelings.
In the imaginative homage novel
The Space Machine , by Christopher Priest. Characters use a modified version of Wells'
The Time Machine, go to Mars and witness a sort of Martian civil war. Notable scene in the book is a battle on the martianic plains between groups of the tripod machines.
Works
- The Chronic Argonauts
- Textbook of Biology
- Honours Physiography, co-written with R. A. Gregory,
- Select Conversations with an Uncle
- The Time Machine: An Invention *
- The Wonderful Visit
- The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents *
- The Argonauts of the Air
- Under the Knife
- In The Abyss
- The Island of Doctor Moreau *
- The Red Room *
- The Wheels of Chance is a comic novel [i] by H. G. Wells [i]. ...
: A Bicycling Idyll * - The Sea Raiders
- The Crystal Egg
- The Star
- A Story of the Stone Age
- The Plattner Story, and Others
- The Invisible Man
...
: A Grotesque Romance *
- Certain Personal Matters: A Collection of Material, Mainly Autobiographical
- The War of the Worlds is a science fiction [i] novel [i] written by H. G. Wells [i] and published in ...
* - The Man Who Could Work Miracles
- When the Sleeper Wakes *
- Tales of Space and Time
- A Story of the Days To Come
- Love and Mr Lewisham: The Story of a Very Young Couple *
- The First Men in the Moon is a 1901 [i] science fiction [i] novel by the British ...
* - Filmer
- The New Accelerator
- Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought
- The Discovery of the Future
- The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine
- Mankind in the Making *
- The Magic Shop *
- Twelve Stories and a Dream
- The Truth About Pyecraft
- The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth *
- The Land Ironclads
- Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul
- A Modern Utopia *
- The Empire of the Ants
- In the Days of the Comet *
- The Future in America: A Search After Realities
- Faults of the Fabian
- Socialism and the Family
- Reconstruction of the Fabian Society
- This Misery of Boots , reprinted from the Independent Review, Dec. 1905.
- Will Socialism Destroy the Home?
- New Worlds for Old
- The War in the Air, and Particularly How Mr Bert Smallways Fared while it Lasted *
- First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life *
- The Valley of Spiders
- Ann Veronica *
- Tono-Bungay *
- The History of Mr. Polly *
- The Sleeper Awakes * - Revised edition of When the Sleeper Wakes 1899
- The Late Mr Elvesham
- The New Machiavelli *
- The Country of the Blind and Other Stories *
- The Door in the Wall and Other Stories
- Floor Games *
- The Great State: Essays in Construction
- Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island: Being the Story of a Gentleman of Culture and Refinement who suffered Shipwreck and saw no Human Beings other than Cruel and Savage Cannibals for several years. How he beheld Megatheria alive and made some notes of their Habits. How he became a Sacred Lunatic. How he did at last escape in a Strange Manner from the Horror and Barbarities of Rampole Island in time to fight in the Great War, and how afterwards he came near returning to that Island for ever. With much Amusing and Edifying Matter concerning Manners, Customs, Beliefs, Warfare, Crime, and a Storm at Sea. Concluding with some Reflections upon Life in General and upon these Present Times in Particular
- The Book of Catherine Wells
- The King Who Was A King: The Book of a Film
- Common Sense of World Peace
- The Adventures of Tommy
- Imperialism and The Open Conspiracy
- The Autocracy of Mr. Parham: His Remarkable Adventures in this Changing World
- The Science of Life: A Summary of Contemporary Knowledge about Life and its Possibilities, I, II, III
- The Way to World Peace
- The Problem of the Troublesome Collaborator: An Account of Certain Difficulties in an Attempt to Produce a Work in Collaboration and of the Intervention of the Society of Authors Therein
- Settlement of the Trouble between Mr. Thring and Mr. Wells: A Footnote to the Problem of the Troublesome Collaborator
- What Are We To Do With Our Lives?
- The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind
- After Democracy: Addresses and Papers on the Present World Situation
- The Bulpington of Blup: Adventures, Poses, Stresses, Conflicts, and Disaster in a Contemporary Brain
- What Should be Done Now?
- The Shape of Things to Come: The Ultimate Revolution
- Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain , I, II
- Stalin-Wells Talk: The Verbatim Record and a Discussion *
- Things to Come: A Film Story
- The Anatomy of Frustration: A Modern Synthesis
- The Croquet Player
- The Idea of a World Encyclopaedia
- The Man Who Could Work Miracles: A Film
- Star Begotten: A Biological Fantasia
- Brynhild, or the Show of Things
- The Camford Visitation
- The Informative Content of Education
- World Brain
- Apropos of Dolores
- The Holy Terror
- Travels of a Republican Radical in Search of Hot Water
- The Fate of Homo Sapiens: An unemotional Statement of the Things that are happening to him now, and of the immediate Possibilities confronting him
- The New World Order: Whether it is attainable, how it can be attained, and what soert of world a world at peace will have to be
- The Rights of Man, Or What Are We Fighting For?
- Babes in the Darkling Wood
- The Common Sense of War and Peace: World Revolution of War Unending
- All Aboard for Ararat
- Guide to the New World: A Handbook of Constructive World Revolution
- You Can't Be Too Careful
- The Outlook for Homo Sapiens: An unemotional Statement of the Things that are happening to him now, and of the immediate Possibilities confrontinmg him
- Science and the World-Mind
- A Thesis on the Quality of Illusion in the Continuity of Individual Life of the Higher Metazoa, with Particular Reference to the Species Homo Sapiens
- The Conquest of Time
- The New Rights of Man: Text of Letter to Wells from Soviet Writer, Who Pictures the Ordeal and Rescue of Humanistic Civilization - H. G. Wells' Reply and Program for Liberated Humanity
- The Mosley Outrage
- '42 to '44: A Contemporary Memoir upon Human Behaviour during the Crisis of the World Revolution
- The Illusion of Personality
- The Happy Turning: A Dream of Life
- Mind at the End of Its Tether
- The Desert Daisy
- The Wealth of Mr Waddy
- H. G. Wells in Love
- The Betterave Papers and Aesop's Quinine for Delphi, edited by John Hammond
Quotes
- "Over great areas of the world it still survives. It is possible that in contact with Western science, and inspired by the spirit of history, the original teaching of Gotama, revived and purified, may yet play a large part in the direction of human destiny."
- "The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it." -- from , 1903.
- "Go away, I'm all right." -- his last words
- "If we don't end war, war will end us." -- seen in the video game Call of Duty is a first-person shooter [i] video game [i] based on the Quake III engine [i]...
.
Footnotes
Sources
- The War of the Worlds Front Page.
Honours
- Phil of the Future: In the Disney Channel series, Phil of the Future, the school the main character go to is called H. G. Wells High School, probably named after H. G. Wells, and probably is related to Wells' interest in Time-Traveling, as Phil of the Future is about a family who time-travels, and gets stuck in a certain year.
See also
External links
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- Introduction to the 1995 edition of Wells' gaming books.
- [https://www.audioville.co.uk/store/search.php?Search=hg+wells&Submit=Search audioVille] Audio dramatisations and readings of a number of HG Wells stories.
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- , a story of mankind, by H. G. Wells, 1914.
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- Wells' Early Life in Midhurst
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