WELLS, H(erbert) G(eorge)

(1866-1946)

   UK writer. At the time of HGW's birth his father was a shopkeeper - having earlier been a gardener and cricketer - but the business failed and HGW's mother was forced to go back into domestic service as a housekeeper. Her desire to elevate the family to middle-class status resulted in "Bertie" being apprenticed to a draper, like his brothers before him, but in 1883 he become a teacher/pupil at Midhurst Grammar School. He obtained a scholarship to the Normal School of Sciencein London and studied biology there under T.H. Huxley (1825-1895), a vociferous proponent of Darwin's theory of EVOLUTION and an outspoken scientific humanist, who made a deep impression on him. HGW resumed teaching, took his degree externally, and wrote 2 textbooks (published 1893) while working for the University Correspondence College. He dabbledin scientific journalism, publishing the essay "The Rediscovery of the Unique" in 1891 and beginning to sell articles and short stories regularlyin 1893.The most ambitious and important of his early articles was "The Man of the Year Million" (1893), which boldly describes Man as HGW thoughtnatural selection would ultimately reshape him: a creature with a huge head and eyes, delicate hands and a much reduced body, permanently immersed in nutrient fluids, having been forced to retreat beneath the Earth's surface after the cooling of the SUN. In other articles HGW wroteabout "The Advent of the Flying Man", "An Excursion to the Sun" (a poetic cosmic vision of solar storms and electromagnetic tides), "The Living Things that May Be" (on the possibility of silicon-based life) and "TheExtinction of Man". A good deal of this speculative nonfiction is reprinted in H.G. Wells: Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction (coll 1975) ed Robert M. PHILMUS and David Y. Hughes. His early shortstories are less adventurous, mostly featuring encounters between men and strange lifeforms, as in "The Stolen Bacillus" (1894), "In the Avu Observatory" (1894), "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid" (1894) and"Aepyornis Island" (1894).The Chronic Argonauts, a series of essays written for his amateur publication The Science Schools Journal in 1888, became the basis for HGW's first major fiction, The Time Machine: An Invention (1895 US; rev 1895 UK), which maps the evolutionary future oflife on Earth. The human species subdivides into the gentle Eloi and the bestial Morlocks; both ultimately become extinct, while life as we know it slowly decays as the Sun cools. His interest in social reform and socialist political ideas is reflected in the fantasy The Wonderful Visit (1895), in which an angel displaced from the Land of Dreams casts acritical eye upon late-Victorian mores and folkways. The central themes of these novels - the implications of Darwin's evolutionary theory and the desire to oppose and eradicate the injustices and hypocrisies of contemporary society - run through all HGW's work. In the quasi-allegorical The Island of Dr Moreau (1896) he developed ideas from an essay, "The Limits of Plasticity", into the story of a hubristic SCIENTIST populating a remote ISLAND with beasts which have beensurgically reshaped as men and whose veneer of civilization exemplified by their chanted "laws"-proves thin. "A Story of the Stone Age" (1897) is a notable attempt to imagine the circumstances which allowed Man to evolve from bestial ancestors. His short stories grew bolder in conception, as exemplified by the visionary fantasy "Under the Knife" (1896), the cosmic- DISASTER story "The Star" (1897) and the cautionary parable "The Man whoCould Work Miracles" (1898), later filmed (see below). The novella A Story of the Days to Come (1899 Pall Mall Magazine; 1976) is an elaborate study of future society, imagining a technologically developed world where poverty and misery are needlessly maintained by class divisions, while The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance (1897) is a second classic study ofscientific hubris brought to destruction.In THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898; with epilogue cut 1898 US) HGW introduced ALIENS into the role which would become a CLICHA: monstrous invaders of Earth, competitors in a cosmic struggle for existence (WAR OF THE WORLDS for radio, film and tv versions). When the Sleeper Wakes (1899; rev vt The Sleeper Awakes 1910) is a robust futuristic romance of socialist revolution, whose hero awakes from SUSPENDED ANIMATION (SLEEPER AWAKES) to play a quasi-messianic (MESSIAHS) role. (HGW was never able to believe in proletarian socialism,assuming that social justice would have to be imposed from above by a benevolent intelligentsia.) In THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1901 US) he carried forward the great tradition of FANTASTIC VOYAGES to the MOON, and described the hyperorganized DYSTOPIAN society of the Selenites. HGW's sf works of this period were labelled "scientific romances" by reviewers, and HGW spoke of them as such in early interviews, although he later chose tolump them together with such fantasies as The Sea Lady (1902) as "fantastic and imaginative romances". Despite this apparent disowning oftheir distinctive qualities, Wells's early SCIENTIFIC ROMANCES became the archetypal examples of a distinctive UK tradition of futuristic and speculative fiction.Wells's early realistic novels drew heavily upon his own experiences to deal with the pretensions and predicaments of the aspiring lower-middle class. The Wheels of Chance (1896) is light comedy in a vein carried forward by the more successful Kipps (1905), The History of Mr Polly (1910) and Bealby: A Holiday (1915), but HGW wanted to make his name as a serious novelist, and attempted to do so with Love and Mr Lewisham (1900). He remained an ardent champion of the novel of ideasversus the novel of character, and he set out to tackle large themes and to attack issues of contemporary social concern. His most successful effort along these lines was Tono-Bungay (1909), followed by Ann Veronica (1909), a polemic on the situation of women in society, and the politicalnovel The New Machiavelli (1910 US). The longest and most pretentious of these novels is The World of William Clissold (3 vols 1926). Some of the later novels of ideas apply fantastic twists for dramatic purposes although remaining basically realistic; the most effective is that deployed in The Dream (1924).In his essays HGW began to direct more effort to careful and rational PREDICTION, and became a founder of FUTUROLOGY with the series of essays collected as Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Human Progress upon Human Life and Thought (coll 1901). Hetried to justify the method of this work in a lecture, published as The Discovery of the Future (1902 chap), which marked a turning-point in histhought and work; from then on he abandoned the wide-ranging, exploratory and unashamedly whimsical imagination which had produced his early scientific romances and focused on the probable development of future HISTORY and the reforms necessary to create a better world. Hisfuturological essays brought him to the attention of Sidney (1859-1947) and Beatrice (1858-1943) Webb, and he joined the Fabian Society in 1903. His subsequent career as a social crusader went through many phases. Hetried to assume command of the Fabian Society in 1906, but failed and withdrew in 1908. During WWI he was active in the League of Nations movement. Between the Wars he visited many countries, addressing the Petrograd Soviet, the Sorbonne and the Reichstag. In 1934 he haddiscussions with both Stalin and Roosevelt, trying to recruit them to his world-saving schemes. His real influence, however, remained negligible, and he despaired of the whole business when the world became embroiled in global war for a second time.In his UTOPIAN novels A Modern Utopia (1905) and Men Like Gods (1923) HGW described technologically sophisticated societies governed by socialist principles, and in his other work he tried to describe the new people who might help to bring such worlds into being. In The Food of the Gods, and How it Came to Earth (1904) the new race isproduced by a super-nutrient which enlarges both body and mind. In In the Days of the Comet (1906) the wondrous change in human personality isbrought about by the gases in a comet's tail, through which the Earth is fortunate enough to pass. The most interesting of HGW's later scientific romances, however, are those which attempt to apply a more rigorous logic to the imagining of future WAR. In "The Land Ironclads" (1903) he anticipated the use of tanks, and in The War in the Air, and Particularly How Mr Bert Smallways Fared while it Lasted (1908) he envisaged colossaldestruction wrought by aerial bombing. In The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind (1914) similar destruction is wrought by atomic bombs whose "chainreactions" cause them to explode repeatedly, and the story embodies HGW'S growing conviction that a new and better world could be built only once the existing social order had been torn down. When WWI began in actuality HGW was for this reason initially enthusiastic - a point of view expressedin what remained for some time his most famous novel, Mr Britling Sees it Through (1916) - but events after 1918 failed to live up to his hopes. Heclung nevertheless to the idea that some such pattern of events would come about, as displayed in the last and most comprehensive of his speculative histories of the future, The Shape of Things to Come (1933), based on his last major summary of his utopian philosophy, The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (2 vols 1931 US). The Shape of Things to Come becamethe basis of HGW's script for the film THINGS TO COME (1935; book version 1935). He also scripted the 1936 film The Man who Could Work Miracles(script published 1936 chap; not to be confused with the book publication of the original story); both scripts were assembled as Two Film Stories: Things to Come; Man who Could Work Miracles (omni 1940). His otherfilmscripts, including one for The King who Was a King (1929), never reached the screen.HGW became increasingly impatient of the follies of his fellow men, and dubbed the post-1918 world the "Age of Frustration" - a notion eccentrically elaborated in The Anatomy of Frustration: A Modern Synthesis (1936). This attitude underlies an extensive series of"sarcastic fantasies" begun with The Undying Fire (1919), an allegory in which the Book of Job is re-enacted in contemporary England, with a dying Wellsian hero "comforted" by various social philosophers. That bookreflected a brief reinvestment in religious faith which HGW explained in God the Invisible King (1917) and dramatized in The Soul of a Bishop(1917). In Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928) a shipwrecked man tries to convert superstitious savages to the ways of common sense but cannot prevail against their cruel and stupid tribal customs; in the end he discovers that he has been delirious, and that Rampole Island is New York. In The Autocracy of Mr Parham (1930) an inoffensive individualbecomes possessed by a "master spirit" which drives him to seek charismatic political power as "Lord Paramount". In The Croquet Player: A Story (1936 chap) a village is haunted by the brutal spectres of Man'sevolutionary heritage, but the allegory is lost on the socialite of the book's title. In The Camford Visitation (1937 chap) the routines of a university are upset by the interventions of a mocking disembodied voice. In All Aboard for Ararat (1940) God asks a new Noah to build a second Ark;Noah agrees, provided that this time God will be content to remain a passenger while Man takes charge of his own destiny. In the gentler Star Begotten: A Biological Fantasia (1937) cosmic rays emanating from Mars mayor may not be causing a mutation in the human spirit comparable to that wrought by the miraculous comet of In the Days of the Comet. The Holy Terror (1939) is a painstaking study of the psychological development of amodern dictator based on the careers of Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler.Most of HGW's short stories were initially reprinted in 5 collections: The Stolen Bacillus, and Other Incidents (coll 1895), The Plattner Story, andOthers (coll 1897), Tales of Space and Time (coll dated 1900 but 1899), Twelve Stories and a Dream (coll 1903) and The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories (coll 1911). The contents of these were reprinted in The Short Stories of H.G. Wells (coll 1927; vt The Famous Short Stories of H.G. Wells 1938 US; vt The Complete Short Stories of H.G. Wells 1965 UK) along with THE TIME MACHINE as well as 3 stories which had previously appeared in the US collection Thirty Strange Stories (coll 1897 US) and 4 others, including the prehistoric fantasy "The Grisly Folk" (1921) and an apocalyptic fantasy, "The Story of the Last Trump", from the non-sf book Boon (coll 1915 as Reginald Bliss; 1920 as by HGW). The short stories notincluded in this omnibus were reprinted in The Man with the Nose and Other Uncollected Short Stories (coll 1984) along with the script for an unmadefilm. HGW's most notable long scientific romances were collected in The Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells (omni 1933; cut vt Seven Famous Novels1934 US), re-edited as Seven Science Fiction Novels (omni 1950 US).HGW possessed a prolific imagination which remained solidly based in biological and historical possibility, and his best works are generally regarded as exemplary of what sf should aspire to do and be. His other ambitions persuaded him to put his bold and vigorous imagination into a straitjacket for the bulk of his career, but he nevertheless remained the founding father and presiding genius of UK scientific romance, and he was a significant influence on the development of US sf. He never managed to resolve the imaginative conflict between his utopian dreams and his interpretation of Darwinian "natural law", as is evidenced by the despairing passages of his essay Mind at the End of its Tether (1945 chap), which opines that mankind may be doomed because people cannot and will not adapt themselves to a sustainable way of life. He seems to have imagined his own career as an analogue of the situation of the hero of The Undying Fire or that of the luckless sighted man in The Country of theBlind (1904 The Strand; 1915 chap US; rev plus original text 1939 chap UK) - although he also portrayed himself ironically as a deluded idealist in Christina Alberta's Father (1925) and seemed quite unable to decide how to portray himself in his quirky Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866) (2 vols 1934), thoughits continuation, H.G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography (1984) - not published during his lifetime because of itssexual content, and because it mentioned living persons-did something to round out the picture. HGW slightly revised many of his works for the 26-vol Atlantic edition of The Works of H.G. Wells (1924-7 US). New anddefinitive editions of the most famous scientific romances - current editions of which reveal many textual variations - were in active preparation from various houses before revision of international copyright conventions extended the period of protection beyond 50 years after the author's death; editions which have, all the same appeared, includeThe Time Machine/The War of the Worlds: A Critical Edition (omni 1977) edFrank D. McConnell which presents some valuable information, though the texts themselves are corrupt; The Definitive Time Machine: A Critical Edition (1987) ed Harry M. Geduld, which is more reliable; THE ISLAND OFDR. MOREAU (1993), a variorum text (eccentrically based on the US version rather than the UK) ed Robert M. PHILMUS; A Critical Edition of The War of the Worlds (1993) ed David Y. Hughes and Harry M. Geduld.Films based on HGW's work include ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932), The INVISIBLE MAN (1933),The WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953), The TIME MACHINE (1960), The FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964), The ISLAND OF DR MOREAU (1977) and, very loosely, FOOD OF THE GODS (1976). Notable RECURSIVE SF in which HGW is a character includes The Space Machine (1976) by Christopher PRIEST, Time After Time (1976) by Karl Alexander (filmed as TIME AFTER TIME [1979]), and "The Inheritors of Earth" (1990) by Eric BROWN.

   BS

   Other collections: Many further collections are merely re-sorts of material first or most reliably published in the collections listed above. Useful collections include 28 Science Fiction Stories (coll 1952), Selected Short Stories (coll 1958)and The Best Science Fiction Stories of H.G. Wells (coll 1966).Other novels: The Research Magnificent (1915); The Bulpington of Blup (1932); You Can't Be Too Careful: A Sample of Life 1901-1951 (1941).Nonfiction:Mankind in the Making (1903); New Worlds for Old (1908); The War that Will End War (1914); The Outline of History (1920); The Salvaging of Civilization (1921); A Short History of the World (1922); The Way the World is Going: Guesses and Forecasts of the World Ahead (1928); The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution (1928); The Science of Life (1930) with Julian Huxley and G.P. Wells; World Brain (1938); The Fate of Homo Sapiens (1939); The New World Order (1939); Phoenix (1942); The Conquest of Time (1942); The Happy Turning: A Dream of Life (1945 chap); Journalism and Prophecy 1893-1946 (coll 1964; cut 1965) ed W. Warren WAGAR.

   About the author: Of the numerous critical works on HGW, those of interest include: The Early H.G. Wells: A Study of the Scientific Romances (1961) by Bernard Bergonzi; H.G. Wells and the World State (1961) by W.W.WAGAR; H.G. Wells: A Collection of Critical Essays (anth 1976) ed Bergonzi; The Logic of Fantasy: H.G. Wells and Science Fiction (1982) by John Huntington; The Life and Thought of H.G. Wells (1963 Russia; trans 1966) by Julius KAGARLITSKI; H.G. Wells and the Culminating Ape: Biological Themes and Imaginative Obsessions (1982) by Peter Kemp; The Science Fiction of H.G. Wells (1981) by Frank McConnell; The Time Traveller: The Life of H.G. Wells (1973) by Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie; H.G. Wells (1970) by Patrick PARRINDER; H.G. Wells: The Critical Heritage (anth 1972) ed Parrinder; H.G. Wells: Critic of Progress (1973) by Jack WILLIAMSON; H.G. Wells and Modern Science Fiction (anth 1977) ed Darko SUVIN and Robert M. PHILMUS; Aspects of a Life (1984) by Anthony WEST, HGW's son by Rebecca West (1892-1983); H.G. Wells: A Comprehensive Bibliography (latest edn 1986) published by the H.G. Wells Society; H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography (1986) by David C. Smith; H.G. Wells under Revision: Proceedings of the H.G. Wells International Symposium, London, July, 1986 (anth 1990) ed Parrinder and Christopher Rolfe.

   See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; ANTIGRAVITY; ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; APES AND CAVEMEN (IN THE HUMAN WORLD); AUTOMATION; BIOLOGY; CITIES; CLUB STORY; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; COMICS; COSMOLOGY; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DEATH RAYS; DEVOLUTION; DIME-NOVEL SF; DIMENSIONS; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; ECONOMICS; EDISONADE; END OF THE WORLD; ENTROPY; ESP; FAR FUTURE; FRANCE; GAMES AND TOYS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GREAT AND SMALL; HEROES; HISTORY OF SF; HIVE-MINDS; HUMOUR; IMAGINARY SCIENCE; INVASION; INVISIBILITY; LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS; MACHINES; MAINSTREAM WRITERS OF SF; MARS; MATHEMATICS; MEDICINE; MONEY; MONSTERS; MUSIC; MUTANTS; NEAR FUTURE; NUCLEAR POWER; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; ORIGIN OF MAN; PARALLEL WORLDS; PERCEPTION; PHYSICS; POLITICS; POLLUTION; POWER SOURCES; PROTO SCIENCE FICTION; PULP MAGAZINES; RADIO; RELIGION; ROCKETS; RUSSIA; SATIRE; SCIENTIFIC ERRORS; SEX; SOCIAL DARWINISM; SOCIOLOGY; SPACESHIPS; SUPERMAN; TECHNOLOGY; THEATRE; TIME TRAVEL; TRANSPORTATION; WAR OF THE WORLDS; WEAPONS.