H. G. Wells
Overview
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction
genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games. Together with Jules Verne
and Hugo Gernsback
, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".
Wells was an outspoken socialist
and sympathetic to pacifist
views, although he supported the First World War
once it was under way, and his later works became increasingly political and didactic
.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games. Together with Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
and Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback , born Hugo Gernsbacher, was a Luxembourgian American inventor, writer, editor, and magazine publisher, best remembered for publications that included the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with H. G...
, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".
Wells was an outspoken socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and sympathetic to pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
views, although he supported the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
once it was under way, and his later works became increasingly political and didactic
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
.
Discussions
Quotations
Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness.
The Time Machine|The Time Machine (1895)
I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last.
The Time Machine|The Time Machine (1895)
It is a law of Nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.
The Time Machine|The Time Machine (1895)
"There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope."
The Island of Dr. Moreau|The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
"We were making the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!"
When The Sleeper Wakes|When The Sleeper Wakes (1899)
The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn.
The Discovery of the Future (1901)
Kipps was unprepared for the unpleasant truth; that the path of social advancement is and must be strewn with broken friendships.
Kipps|Kipps the Story of a Simple Soul (1905) Bk. 2, ch. 5
And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here." In the air all directions lead everywhere.
The War in the Air|The War in the Air (1908)
The third peculiarity of aerial warfare was that it was at once enormously destructive and entirely indecisive.
The War in the Air
Encyclopedia
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction
genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games. Together with Jules Verne
and Hugo Gernsback
, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".
Wells was an outspoken socialist
and sympathetic to pacifist
views, although he supported the First World War
once it was under way, and his later works became increasingly political and didactic
. His middle-period novels (1900–1920) were less science-fictional; they covered lower-middle class life (The History of Mr Polly) and the "New Woman" and the Suffragette
s (Ann Veronica
).
, in the county
of Kent
, a small market town, on 21 September 1866. Called "Bertie" in the family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells (a former domestic gardener, and at the time a shopkeeper and professional cricket
er) and his wife Sarah Neal (a former domestic servant
). The family was of the impoverished lower middle class
. An inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper: the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. Joseph Wells managed to earn a meagre income, but little of it came from the shop; Joseph received an unsteady amount of money from playing professional cricket for the Kent county team
. Payment for skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary donations afterwards, or from small payments from the clubs where matches were played.
A defining incident of young Wells's life was an accident he had in 1874, which left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he started reading books from the local library, brought to him by his father. He 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 later said, on producing copperplate handwriting
and doing the sort of sums useful to tradesmen. Wells continued at Morley's Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh. The accident effectively put an end to Joseph's career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss of the primary source of family income.
No longer able to support themselves financially, the family instead sought to place their sons as apprentice
s in various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper
at the Southsea
Drapery Emporium, Hyde's. His experiences at Hyde's, where he worked a thirteen hour day and slept in a dormitory with other apprentices, were later used as inspiration for some of his novel material The Wheels of Chance
and Kipps
, which delve into the life of a draper's apprentice as well as providing a critique of the world's distribution of wealth.
Herbert's parents' marriage was a turbulent relationship: due primarily to his mother being a Protestant
and his father a self-confessed freethinker
. When his mother returned to work as a lady's maid
(at Uppark
, a country house
in Sussex
), one of the conditions of work was that she would not be permitted to have living space for her husband and children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives: though they never divorced and neither ever developed extramarital liaisons. As a consequence, Herbert's personal troubles increased as he subsequently failed as a draper and also, later, as a chemist's assistant. After each failure, he would arrive at Uppark"the bad shilling back again!" as he saidand stay there until a fresh start could be arranged for him. Fortunately for Herbert, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself, reading many classic works, including Plato
's Republic, and More
's Utopia
. This would be the beginning of Herbert George Wells's venture into literature.
In October 1879 Wells's mother arranged through a distant relative, Arthur Williams, for him to join the National School
at Wookey
in Somerset as a pupil-teacher, a senior pupil who acted as a teacher of younger children. In December that year, however, Williams was dismissed for irregularities in his qualifications and Wells was returned to Uppark. After a short apprenticeship at a chemist in nearby Midhurst
, and an even shorter stay as a boarder at Midhurst Grammar School
, he signed his apprenticeship papers at Hyde's. In 1883 Wells persuaded his parents to release him from the apprenticeship, taking an opportunity offered by Midhurst Grammar School again to become a pupil-teacher; his proficiency in Latin and science during his previous, short stay had been remembered.
The years he spent in Southsea had been the most miserable of his life to that point, but his good fortune at securing a position at Midhurst Grammar School meant that Wells could continue his self-education in earnest. The following year, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science
in South Kensington
, now part of Imperial College London
) in London, studying biology
under Thomas Henry 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 a weekly allowance of twenty-one shilling
s (a guinea
) thanks to his scholarship. This ought to have been a comfortable sum of money (at the time many working class
families had "round about a pound a week" as their entire household income) yet in his Experiment in Autobiography, Wells speaks of constantly being hungry, and indeed, photographs of him at the time show a youth very thin and malnourished.
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 The Republic by Plato
, he soon turned to 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, as well as trying his hand at fiction: the first version of his novel The Time Machine
was published in the journal under the title, The Chronic Argonauts
. The school year 1886–1887 was the last year of his studies. In spite of 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 subsequent loss of his scholarship.
It was not until 1890 that Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology
from the University of London External Programme. In 1889–90 he managed to find a post as a teacher at Henley House School where he taught and admired A. A. Milne
.
Upon leaving the Normal School of Science, Wells was left without a source of income. His aunt Mary—his father's sister-in-law—invited him to stay with her for a while, which solved his immediate problem of accommodation. During his stay at his aunt's residence, he grew increasingly interested in her daughter, Isabel. He would later go on to court her.
In 1891 Wells, married his cousin
Isabel Mary Wells, but left her in 1894 for one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins (known as Jane), whom he married in 1895. Poor health took him to Sandgate
, near Folkestone
, where in 1901 he constructed a large family home: Spade House
. He had two sons with Jane: George Philip
(known as "Gip") in 1901 (d.1985) and Frank Richard in 1903. The marriage lasted until her death in 1927.
During his marriage to Jane Robbins, Wells had affair
s with a number of women, including the American birth-control
activist Margaret Sanger
and novelist Elizabeth von Arnim
. In 1909 he had a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves
, whose parents, William
and Maud Pember Reeves
, he had met through the Fabian Society
; and in 1914, a son, Anthony West (1914–1987), by the novelist and feminist
Rebecca West
, twenty-six years his junior.
"I was never a great amorist", Wells wrote in Experiment in Autobiography (1934), "though I have loved several people very deeply".
was Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought (1901). When originally serialised in a magazine it was subtitled, "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicitly futuristic
work. Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, 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; the defeat of German militarism
, and the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft
before 1950, and averred that "my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea").
His early novels, called "scientific romance
s", invented a number of themes now classic in science fiction
in such works as The Time Machine
, The Island of Doctor Moreau
, The Invisible Man
, The War of the Worlds
, When the Sleeper Wakes
, and The First Men in the Moon
. He also wrote other, non-fantastic novels that have received critical acclaim including Kipps
and the satire on Edwardian advertising, Tono-Bungay
.
Wells wrote several dozen short stories and novellas, the best known of which is "The Country of the Blind
" (1904). His short story "The New Accelerator
" was the inspiration for the Star Trek
episode Wink of an Eye.
Though Tono-Bungay
was not a science-fiction novel, radioactive decay
plays a small but consequential role in it. Radioactive decay plays a much larger role in The World Set Free
(1914). 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 over 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 (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". Leó Szilárd
acknowledged that the book inspired him to theorise the nuclear chain reaction
.
Wells also wrote nonfiction. His bestselling three-volume work, The Outline of History
(1920), began a new era of popularised world history. It received a mixed critical response from professional historians. Many other authors followed with "Outlines" of their own in other subjects. Wells reprised his Outline in 1922 with a much shorter popular work, A Short History of the World, and two long efforts, The Science of Life
(1930) and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931). 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 (2006).
From quite early in his career, he sought a better way to organise society, and wrote a number of Utopia
n novels. The first of these was A Modern Utopia
(1905), which shows a worldwide utopia with "no imports but meteorites, and no exports at all"; two travellers from our world fall into its alternate history. The others usually begin 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 and abandoning a European war (In the Days of the Comet
(1906)), or a world council of scientists taking over, as in The Shape of Things to Come
(1933, which he later adapted for the 1936 Alexander Korda
film, Things to Come
). This depicted, all too accurately, the impending World War
, with cities being destroyed by aerial bombs. He also portrayed the rise of fascist
dictators in The Autocracy of Mr Parham (1930) and The Holy Terror (1939).
Wells contemplates the ideas of nature versus nurture
and questions humanity in books such as The Island of Doctor Moreau
. Not all his scientific romances ended in a happy Utopia, and in fact, Wells also wrote the first dystopia
novel, When the Sleeper Wakes
(1899, rewritten as The Sleeper Awakes
, 1910), which pictures a future society where the classes have become more and more separated, leading to a revolt of the masses against the rulers. The Island of Doctor Moreau is even darker. The narrator, having been trapped on an island of animals vivisected (unsuccessfully) into human beings, eventually returns to England; like Gulliver
on his return from the Houyhnhnm
s, he finds himself unable to shake off the perceptions of his fellow humans as barely civilised beasts, slowly reverting 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 the evidence inadequate and dismissed the case. A Privy Council report added that, as Deek's work had not been printed, there were no legal grounds at all for the action.
In 1933 Wells predicted in The Shape of Things to Come that the world war he feared would begin January 1940, a prediction which ultimately came true just four months early, when the Second World War broke out in September 1939.
In 1936, before the Royal Institution
, Wells called for the compilation of a constantly growing and changing World Encyclopedia
, to be reviewed by outstanding authorities and made accessible to every human being. In 1938, he published a collection of essays on the future organisation of knowledge and education, 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 people slated for immediate arrest during the invasion of Britain in the abandoned Operation Sea Lion, and Wells was included in the alphabetical list on the same page of "The Black Book
" as Rebecca West. Wells, as president of the International PEN
(Poets, Essayists, Novelists), 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.
Seeking a more structured way to play war games, Wells also wrote Floor Games
(1911) followed by Little Wars
(1913). Little Wars is recognised today as the first recreational wargame
and Wells is regarded by gamers and hobbyists as "the Father of Miniature War Gaming".
. He was for a time a member of the socialist Fabian Society
, but broke with them as his creative political imagination, matching the originality shown in his fiction, outran theirs. He later grew staunchly critical of them as having a poor understanding of economics and educational reform. He ran as a Labour Party
candidate for London University
in the 1922
and 1923 general elections
after the death of his friend W. H. R. Rivers
, but at that point his faith in the party was weak or uncertain.
in which the Time Traveller speaks of the future world, with its two races, as having evolved from
Nevertheless, Wells has this very same Time Traveller speak in terms antithetical to much of socialist thought, referring approvingly and as "perfect" and with no social problem unsolved, to an imagined world of stark class division between the rich assured of their wealth and comfort, and the rest of humanity assigned to lifelong toil:
. He stated in his autobiography that from 1900 onward he considered a World State inevitable. He envisioned the state to be a planned society that would advance science, end nationalism, and allow people to progress by merit rather than birth.
In his book In the Fourth Year published in 1918 he suggested how each nation of the world would elect, "upon democratic lines" by proportional representation
, an electoral college
in the manner of the United States of America, in turn to select its delegate to the proposed League of Nations
. This international body he contrasted with imperialism
, not only the imperialism of Germany, against which the war was being fought, but also the imperialism, which he considered more benign, of Britain and France.
His values and political thinking came under increasing criticism from the 1920s and afterwards.
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 in an article in the left-leaning New Statesman
magazine, "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 course of his visit to the Soviet Union in 1934, he debated the merits of reformist
socialism over Marxism-Leninism
with Stalin.
. In 1904 he discussed a survey paper by Francis Galton
, co-founder of eugenics, saying "I believe ... It is in the sterilisation of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies". Some contemporary supporters even suggested connections between the "degenerate" man-creatures portrayed in The Time Machine and Wells's eugenic beliefs. For example, the economist Irving Fisher
said in a 1912 address to the Eugenics Research Association: "The Nordic race will ... vanish or lose its dominance if, in fact, the whole human race does not sink so low as to become the prey, as H. G. Wells images, of some less degenerate animal!"
before the First World War, but later became a bitter opponent of the Zionist movement in general. He saw Zionism
as an exclusive and separatist movement which challenged the collective solidarity he advocated in his vision of a world state. No supporter of Jewish identity in general, Wells had in his utopian writings predicted the ultimate assimilation of Jewry.
.
In the end his contemporary political impact was limited. His efforts regarding the League of Nations
became a disappointment as the organisation 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 (1945) 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".
Of Christianity he has this to say: "... it is not now true for me ... Every believing Christian is, I am sure, my spiritual brother ... but if systemically I called myself a Christian I feel that to most men I should imply too much and so tell a lie." Of other world religions he writes: "All these religions are true for me as Canterbury Cathedral is a true thing and as a Swiss chalet is a true thing. There they are, and they have served a purpose, they have worked. Only they are not true for me to live in them ... They do not work for me."
quipped: "Mr. Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message."
Wells was a diabetic
, and a co-founder in 1934 of what is now Diabetes UK
, the leading charity for people living with diabetes in the UK.
On 28 October 1940 Wells was interviewed by Orson Welles
, who two years previous had performed an infamous radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds
, on KTSA
radio in San Antonio, Texas
. In the interview, Wells admitted his surprise at the widespread panic that resulted from the broadcast, but acknowledged his debt to Welles for increasing sales of one of his "more obscure" titles.
He died of unspecified causes on 13 August 1946 at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park
, London, aged 79. Some reports indicate the cause of death was diabetes or liver cancer. In his preface to the 1941 edition of The War in the Air
, Wells had stated that his epitaph
should be: "I told you so. You damned fools." He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium
on 16 August 1946 and his ashes were scattered at sea. A commemorative blue plaque
in his honour was installed at his home in Regent's Park.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games. Together with Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
and Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback , born Hugo Gernsbacher, was a Luxembourgian American inventor, writer, editor, and magazine publisher, best remembered for publications that included the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with H. G...
, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".
Wells was an outspoken socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and sympathetic to pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
views, although he supported the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
once it was under way, and his later works became increasingly political and didactic
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
. His middle-period novels (1900–1920) were less science-fictional; they covered lower-middle class life (The History of Mr Polly) and the "New Woman" and the Suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
s (Ann Veronica
Ann Veronica
Ann Veronica is a novel by H.G. Wells first published in 1909. The book deals with contemporary political issues, concentrating specifically on feminist issues...
).
Early life
Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House, 47 High Street, BromleyBromley
Bromley is a large suburban town in south east London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Bromley. It was historically a market town, and prior to 1963 was in the county of Kent and formed the administrative centre of the Municipal Borough of Bromley...
, in the county
Historic counties of England
The historic counties of England are subdivisions of England established for administration by the Normans and in most cases based on earlier Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and shires...
of Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, a small market town, on 21 September 1866. Called "Bertie" in the family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells (a former domestic gardener, and at the time a shopkeeper and professional cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
er) and his wife Sarah Neal (a former domestic servant
Domestic worker
A domestic worker is a man, woman or child who works within the employer's household. Domestic workers perform a variety of household services for an individual or a family, from providing care for children and elderly dependents to cleaning and household maintenance, known as housekeeping...
). The family was of the impoverished lower middle class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
. An inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper: the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. Joseph Wells managed to earn a meagre income, but little of it came from the shop; Joseph received an unsteady amount of money from playing professional cricket for the Kent county team
Kent County Cricket Club
Kent County Cricket Club is one of the 18 first class county county cricket clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the county of Kent...
. Payment for skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary donations afterwards, or from small payments from the clubs where matches were played.
A defining incident of young Wells's life was an accident he had in 1874, which left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he started reading books from the local library, brought to him by his father. He 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
Private school
Private schools, also known as independent schools or nonstate schools, are not administered by local, state or national governments; thus, they retain the right to select their students and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students' tuition, rather than relying on mandatory...
founded in 1849 following the bankruptcy of Morley's earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, on producing copperplate handwriting
Copperplate script
Copperplate, or English round hand, is a style of calligraphic writing, using a sharp pointed nib instead of the flat nib used in most calligraphic writing. Its name comes from the fact that the copybooks from which students learned it were printed from etched copper plates...
and doing the sort of sums useful to tradesmen. Wells continued at Morley's Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh. The accident effectively put an end to Joseph's career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss of the primary source of family income.
No longer able to support themselves financially, the family instead sought to place their sons as apprentice
Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...
s in various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper
Draper
Draper is the now largely obsolete term for a wholesaler, or especially retailer, of cloth, mainly for clothing, or one who works in a draper's shop. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. The drapers were an important trade guild...
at the Southsea
Southsea
Southsea is a seaside resort located in Portsmouth at the southern end of Portsea Island in the county of Hampshire in England. Southsea is within a mile of Portsmouth's city centre....
Drapery Emporium, Hyde's. His experiences at Hyde's, where he worked a thirteen hour day and slept in a dormitory with other apprentices, were later used as inspiration for some of his novel material The Wheels of Chance
The Wheels of Chance
The Wheels of Chance is an early comic novel by H. G. Wells about a cycle holiday, somewhat in the style of Three Men in a Boat. In 1922 it was adapted into a silent film The Wheels of Chance directed by Harold M...
and Kipps
Kipps
Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905. Humorous yet sympathetic, this perceptive social novel is generally regarded as a masterpiece, and was the author's own favourite work.-Plot:...
, which delve into the life of a draper's apprentice as well as providing a critique of the world's distribution of wealth.
Herbert's parents' marriage was a turbulent relationship: due primarily to his mother being a Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
and his father a self-confessed freethinker
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
. When his mother returned to work as a lady's maid
Lady's maid
A lady's maid is a female personal attendant who waits on the lady of the house. The position is very similar to a gentleman's valet. Traditionally, in eras past, the lady's maid was not as high-ranking as a lady's companion, who was a retainer rather than a servant, but the rewards included room...
(at Uppark
Uppark
Uppark is a 17th-century house in South Harting, Petersfield, West Sussex, England and a National Trust property.The house, set high on the South Downs, was built for Ford Grey , the first Earl of Tankerville, c. 1690 and was sold in 1747 to Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh and his wife Sarah...
, a country house
English country house
The English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a London house. This allowed to them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country...
in Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
), one of the conditions of work was that she would not be permitted to have living space for her husband and children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives: though they never divorced and neither ever developed extramarital liaisons. As a consequence, Herbert's personal troubles increased as he subsequently failed as a draper and also, later, as a chemist's assistant. After each failure, he would arrive at Uppark"the bad shilling back again!" as he saidand stay there until a fresh start could be arranged for him. Fortunately for Herbert, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself, reading many classic works, including Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's Republic, and More
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
's Utopia
Utopia (book)
Utopia is a work of fiction by Thomas More published in 1516...
. This would be the beginning of Herbert George Wells's venture into literature.
Teacher
National school (England and Wales)
A national school was a school founded in 19th century England and Wales by the National Society for Promoting Religious Education.These schools provided elementary education, in accordance with the teaching of the Church of England, to the children of the poor.Together with the less numerous...
at Wookey
Wookey
Wookey is a village and civil parish west of Wells, on the River Axe in the Mendip district of Somerset, England. Wookey is often confused with its sister village Wookey Hole which is perhaps best known today for the Wookey Hole Caves...
in Somerset as a pupil-teacher, a senior pupil who acted as a teacher of younger children. In December that year, however, Williams was dismissed for irregularities in his qualifications and Wells was returned to Uppark. After a short apprenticeship at a chemist in nearby Midhurst
Midhurst
Midhurst is a market town and civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England, with a population of 4,889 in 2001. The town is situated on the River Rother and is home to the ruin of the Tudor Cowdray House and the stately Victorian Cowdray Park...
, and an even shorter stay as a boarder at Midhurst Grammar School
Midhurst Grammar School
Midhurst Grammar School was a comprehensive upper school in Midhurst, West Sussex. It served pupils aged 13 to 18 who usually joined the school from one of the local intermediate schools. It was replaced in 2009 by the new Midhurst Rother Academy.-History:...
, he signed his apprenticeship papers at Hyde's. In 1883 Wells persuaded his parents to release him from the apprenticeship, taking an opportunity offered by Midhurst Grammar School again to become a pupil-teacher; his proficiency in Latin and science during his previous, short stay had been remembered.
The years he spent in Southsea had been the most miserable of his life to that point, but his good fortune at securing a position at Midhurst Grammar School meant that Wells could continue his self-education in earnest. The following year, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science
Royal College of Science
The Royal College of Science was a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it was a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Alumni include H. G. Wells and Brian May and are distinguishable by the letters ARCS ...
in South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
, now part of Imperial College London
Imperial College London
Imperial College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, specialising in science, engineering, business and medicine...
) in London, studying biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
under Thomas Henry 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 a weekly allowance of twenty-one shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
s (a guinea
Guinea (British coin)
The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
) thanks to his scholarship. This ought to have been a comfortable sum of money (at the time many working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
families had "round about a pound a week" as their entire household income) yet in his Experiment in Autobiography, Wells speaks of constantly being hungry, and indeed, photographs of him at the time show a youth very thin and malnourished.
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 The Republic by Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, he soon turned to contemporary ideas of socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
as expressed by the recently formed Fabian Society
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
and free lectures delivered at Kelmscott House
Kelmscott House
Kelmscott House is a historic building in Hammersmith, the London home of William Morris from April 1879 to his death in October 1896.Originally called "The Retreat", Morris renamed it after the Oxfordshire village of Kelmscott where he had lived at Kelmscott Manor from June 1871.Kelmscott House is...
, the home of William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
. 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, as well as trying his hand at fiction: the first version of his novel The Time Machine
The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 for the first time and later adapted into at least two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It indirectly inspired many more works of fiction...
was published in the journal under the title, The Chronic Argonauts
The Chronic Argonauts
"The Chronic Argonauts" is a short story written by H. G. Wells. First published by the Royal College of Science in 1888, it is the first well-developed use of a machine constructed to travel through time in science fiction, as it predates Wells's more famous time traveling novel, The Time...
. The school year 1886–1887 was the last year of his studies. In spite of having previously successfully passed his exams in both biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
and physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, his lack of interest in geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
resulted in his failure to pass and the subsequent loss of his scholarship.
It was not until 1890 that Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
from the University of London External Programme. In 1889–90 he managed to find a post as a teacher at Henley House School where he taught and admired A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...
.
Upon leaving the Normal School of Science, Wells was left without a source of income. His aunt Mary—his father's sister-in-law—invited him to stay with her for a while, which solved his immediate problem of accommodation. During his stay at his aunt's residence, he grew increasingly interested in her daughter, Isabel. He would later go on to court her.
Personal life
Cousin marriage
Cousin marriage is marriage between two cousins. In various jurisdictions and cultures, such marriages range from being considered ideal and actively encouraged, to being uncommon but still legal, to being seen as incest and legally prohibited....
Isabel Mary Wells, but left her in 1894 for one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins (known as Jane), whom he married in 1895. Poor health took him to Sandgate
Sandgate, Kent
Sandgate is a village in the Folkestone and Hythe Urban Area in the Shepway district of Kent, England. In 2004, the village re-acquired civil parish status....
, near Folkestone
Folkestone
Folkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
, where in 1901 he constructed a large family home: Spade House
Spade House
Spade House was the home of the science fiction writer H. G. Wells from 1901 to 1909. It is a large mansion overlooking Sandgate, near Folkestone in southeast England.-History:...
. He had two sons with Jane: George Philip
G. P. Wells
George Philip Wells FRS , son of the British science fiction author H. G. Wells, was a zoologist and author. He co-authored, with his father and Julian Huxley, The Science of Life. A pupil at Oundle School, he was in the first class to learn Russian as a modern language in a British school...
(known as "Gip") in 1901 (d.1985) and Frank Richard in 1903. The marriage lasted until her death in 1927.
During his marriage to Jane Robbins, Wells had affair
Affair
Affair may refer to professional, personal, or public business matters or to a particular business or private activity of a temporary duration, as in family affair, a private affair, or a romantic affair.-Political affair:...
s with a number of women, including the American birth-control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
activist Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American sex educator, nurse, and birth control activist. Sanger coined the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood...
and novelist Elizabeth von Arnim
Elizabeth von Arnim
Elizabeth von Arnim , born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an Australian-born British novelist. By marriage she became Gräfin von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and by a second marriage, Countess Russell...
. In 1909 he had a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves
Amber Reeves
Amber Blanco White [née Amber Reeves] was a British feminist writer and scholar.-Early life:Reeves was born in Christchurch, New Zealand,the eldest of three children...
, whose parents, William
William Pember Reeves
The Hon. William Pember Reeves was a New Zealand statesman, historian and poet, who promoted social reform.-Biography:...
and Maud Pember Reeves
Maud Pember Reeves
Maud Pember Reeves was a feminist, writer and member of the Fabian Society. She spent most of her life in New Zealand and Britain....
, he had met through the Fabian Society
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
; and in 1914, a son, Anthony West (1914–1987), by the novelist and feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
Rebecca West
Rebecca West
Cicely Isabel Fairfield , known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public...
, twenty-six years his junior.
"I was never a great amorist", Wells wrote in Experiment in Autobiography (1934), "though I have loved several people very deeply".
Artist
As one method of self-expression, Wells tended to draw a lot. One common location for these sketches was the endpapers and title pages of his own diaries, and they covered a wide variety of topics, from political commentary to his feelings toward his literary contemporaries and his current romantic interests. During his marriage to Amy Catherine, whom he nicknamed Jane, he sketched a considerable number of pictures, many of them being overt comments on their marriage. It was during this period, and this period only, that he called his sketches "picshuas". These picshuas have been the topic of study by Wells scholars for many years, and recently a book was published on the subject.Writer
Wells's first non-fiction bestsellerBestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
was Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought (1901). When originally serialised in a magazine it was subtitled, "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicitly futuristic
Future
The future is the indefinite time period after the present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the nature of the reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist is temporary and will come...
work. Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, 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; the defeat of German militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
, and the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...
before 1950, and averred that "my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea").
Scientific romance
Scientific romance is a bygone name for what is now commonly known as science fiction. The term is most associated with early British science fiction. The earliest noteworthy use of the term scientific romance is believed to have been by Charles Howard Hinton in his 1886 collection...
s", invented a number of themes now classic in science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
in such works as The Time Machine
The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 for the first time and later adapted into at least two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It indirectly inspired many more works of fiction...
, The Island of Doctor Moreau
The Island of Doctor Moreau
The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells. It is told from the point of view of a man named Edward Prendick who is shipwrecked, rescued by a passing boat, and then left at the ship's destination by the crew along with the ship's cargo of exotic animals...
, The Invisible Man
The Invisible Man
The Invisible Man is a science fiction novella by H.G. Wells published in 1897. Wells' novel was originally serialised in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, and published as a novel the same year...
, The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds is an 1898 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells.The War of the Worlds may also refer to:- Radio broadcasts :* The War of the Worlds , the 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles...
, When the Sleeper Wakes
The Sleeper Awakes
The Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian novel by H. G. Wells about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has become the richest man in the world...
, and The First Men in the Moon
The First Men in the Moon
The First Men in the Moon is a 1901 scientific romance novel by the English author H. G. Wells. The novel tells the story of a journey to the moon undertaken by the two protagonists, the impoverished businessman Mr Bedford and the brilliant but eccentric scientist Dr. Cavor...
. He also wrote other, non-fantastic novels that have received critical acclaim including Kipps
Kipps
Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905. Humorous yet sympathetic, this perceptive social novel is generally regarded as a masterpiece, and was the author's own favourite work.-Plot:...
and the satire on Edwardian advertising, Tono-Bungay
Tono-Bungay
Tono-Bungay , by H. G. Wells, is a realist semi-autobiographical novel. It is narrated by George Ponderevo, a science student who is drafted in to help with the promotion of Tono-Bungay, a harmful stimulant disguised as a miraculous cure-all, the creation of his ambitious uncle Edward...
.
Wells wrote several dozen short stories and novellas, the best known of which is "The Country of the Blind
The Country of the Blind
"The Country of the Blind" is a short story written by H. G. Wells. It was first published in the April 1904 issue of the Strand Magazine and included in a 1911 collection of Wells's short stories, The Country of the Blind and Other Stories...
" (1904). His short story "The New Accelerator
The New Accelerator
"The New Accelerator" is a 1901 science fiction short story by H. G. Wells. The story addresses the invention of an elixir that enables an individual to move rapidly through time....
" was the inspiration for the Star Trek
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry, produced by Desilu Productions . Star Trek was telecast on NBC from September 8, 1966, through June 3, 1969...
episode Wink of an Eye.
Though Tono-Bungay
Tono-Bungay
Tono-Bungay , by H. G. Wells, is a realist semi-autobiographical novel. It is narrated by George Ponderevo, a science student who is drafted in to help with the promotion of Tono-Bungay, a harmful stimulant disguised as a miraculous cure-all, the creation of his ambitious uncle Edward...
was not a science-fiction novel, radioactive decay
Radioactive decay
Radioactive decay is the process by which an atomic nucleus of an unstable atom loses energy by emitting ionizing particles . The emission is spontaneous, in that the atom decays without any physical interaction with another particle from outside the atom...
plays a small but consequential role in it. Radioactive decay plays a much larger role in The World Set Free
The World Set Free
The World Set Free is a novel published in 1914 by H. G. Wells. The book is considered to foretell nuclear weapons. It had appeared first in serialized form with a different ending as A Prophetic Trilogy, consisting of three books: A Trap to Catch the Sun, The Last War in the World and The World...
(1914). This book contains what is surely his biggest prophetic "hit". Scientists of the day were well aware that the natural decay of radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
releases energy at a slow rate over 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 (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". Leó Szilárd
Leó Szilárd
Leó Szilárd was an Austro-Hungarian physicist and inventor who conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear reactor with Enrico Fermi, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb...
acknowledged that the book inspired him to theorise the nuclear chain reaction
Nuclear chain reaction
A nuclear chain reaction occurs when one nuclear reaction causes an average of one or more nuclear reactions, thus leading to a self-propagating number of these reactions. The specific nuclear reaction may be the fission of heavy isotopes or the fusion of light isotopes...
.
Wells also wrote nonfiction. His bestselling three-volume work, The Outline of History
The Outline of History
The Outline of History, subtitled either "The Whole Story of Man" or "Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind", is a book by H. G. Wells published in 1919...
(1920), began a new era of popularised world history. It received a mixed critical response from professional historians. Many other authors followed with "Outlines" of their own in other subjects. Wells reprised his Outline in 1922 with a much shorter popular work, A Short History of the World, and two long efforts, The Science of Life
The Science of Life
The Science of Life is nine books in three volumes written by Julian Huxley and G. P. Wells, edited by H. G. Wells and published by The Waverley Publishing Company Ltd in 1929-30, describing all major aspects of biology as known in the 1920s. The full details of its publishing record are as...
(1930) and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931). The "Outlines" became sufficiently common for James Thurber
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
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 (2006).
From quite early in his career, he sought a better way to organise society, and wrote a number of Utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n novels. The first of these was A Modern Utopia
A Modern Utopia
A Modern Utopia is a work of fiction by H. G. Wells.* H. G. Wells's proposal for social reform was the formation of a world state, a concept that increasingly occupied him throughout the remainder of his life...
(1905), which shows a worldwide utopia with "no imports but meteorites, and no exports at all"; two travellers from our world fall into its alternate history. The others usually begin with the world rushing to catastrophe, until people realise a better way of living: whether by mysterious gases from a comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
causing people to behave rationally and abandoning a European war (In the Days of the Comet
In the Days of the Comet
In the Days of the Comet is a 1906 science fiction novel by H. G. Wells in which the vapors of a comet are used as a device which brings about a profound and lasting transformation in the attitudes and perspectives of humankind.-Plot summary:...
(1906)), or a world council of scientists taking over, as in The Shape of Things to Come
The Shape of Things to Come
The Shape of Things to Come is a work of science fiction by H. G. Wells, published in 1933, which speculates on future events from 1933 until the year 2106. The book is dominated by Wells's belief in a world state as the solution to mankind's problems....
(1933, which he later adapted for the 1936 Alexander Korda
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British producer and film director. He was a leading figure in the British film industry, the founder of London Films and the owner of British Lion Films, a film distributing company.-Life and career:The elder brother of filmmakers Zoltán Korda and Vincent...
film, Things to Come
Things to Come
Things to Come is a British science fiction film produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzies. The screenplay was written by H. G. Wells and is a loose adaptation of his own 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come and his 1931 non-fiction work, The Work, Wealth and Happiness...
). This depicted, all too accurately, the impending World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, with cities being destroyed by aerial bombs. He also portrayed the rise of fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
dictators in The Autocracy of Mr Parham (1930) and The Holy Terror (1939).
Nature versus nurture
The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities versus personal experiences The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature," i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences...
and questions humanity in books such as The Island of Doctor Moreau
The Island of Doctor Moreau
The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells. It is told from the point of view of a man named Edward Prendick who is shipwrecked, rescued by a passing boat, and then left at the ship's destination by the crew along with the ship's cargo of exotic animals...
. Not all his scientific romances ended in a happy Utopia, and in fact, Wells also wrote the first dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
novel, When the Sleeper Wakes
The Sleeper Awakes
The Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian novel by H. G. Wells about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has become the richest man in the world...
(1899, rewritten as The Sleeper Awakes
The Sleeper Awakes
The Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian novel by H. G. Wells about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has become the richest man in the world...
, 1910), which pictures a future society where the classes have become more and more separated, leading to a revolt of the masses against the rulers. The Island of Doctor Moreau is even darker. The narrator, having been trapped on an island of animals vivisected (unsuccessfully) into human beings, eventually returns to England; like Gulliver
Gulliver's Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...
on his return from the Houyhnhnm
Houyhnhnm
Houyhnhnms are a race of intelligent horses described in the last part of Jonathan Swift's satirical Gulliver's Travels. The name is pronounced either or ....
s, he finds himself unable to shake off the perceptions of his fellow humans as barely civilised beasts, slowly reverting to their animal natures.
Wells also wrote the preface for the first edition of W. N. P. Barbellion
W. N. P. Barbellion
Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion was the nom-de-plume of Bruce Frederick Cummings , an English diarist who was responsible for The Journal of a Disappointed Man. Ronald Blythe called it "among the most moving diaries ever created" - Early life and education :Cummings was born in Barnstaple in 1889...
's diaries, The Journal of a Disappointed Man, published in 1919. Since "Barbellion" was the real author's pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
, 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
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
, claiming that he had stolen much of the content of The Outline of History
The Outline of History
The Outline of History, subtitled either "The Whole Story of Man" or "Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind", is a book by H. G. Wells published in 1919...
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 the evidence inadequate and dismissed the case. A Privy Council report added that, as Deek's work had not been printed, there were no legal grounds at all for the action.
In 1933 Wells predicted in The Shape of Things to Come that the world war he feared would begin January 1940, a prediction which ultimately came true just four months early, when the Second World War broke out in September 1939.
In 1936, before the Royal Institution
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
, Wells called for the compilation of a constantly growing and changing World Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
, to be reviewed by outstanding authorities and made accessible to every human being. In 1938, he published a collection of essays on the future organisation of knowledge and education, World Brain
World Brain
World Brain is a collection of essays and addresses the English science fiction pioneer, social reformer, evolutionary biologist and historian H. G. Wells written during the period 1936-38...
, including the essay, "The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia".
Near the end of the Second World War, Allied forces
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
discovered that the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
had compiled lists of people slated for immediate arrest during the invasion of Britain in the abandoned Operation Sea Lion, and Wells was included in the alphabetical list on the same page of "The Black Book
The Black Book
The Black Book was the post-war name given to the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. , the list of prominent British to be arrested in the case of a successful invasion of Britain by Nazi Germany in World War II.-Background:The list was similar to earlier lists prepared by SS like the Special Prosecution...
" as Rebecca West. Wells, as president of the International PEN
International PEN
PEN International , the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
(Poets, Essayists, Novelists), had already angered the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
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
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
writers to its membership.
Seeking a more structured way to play war games, Wells also wrote Floor Games
Floor Games
Floor Games is a book written in 1911 by H. G. Wells. It is a light-hearted, sometimes humorous discussion about the theory, purpose, and methodology of playing a variety of children's games with models, miniatures, and other props....
(1911) followed by Little Wars
Little Wars
Little Wars is a set of rules for playing with toy soldiers, written by H. G. Wells in 1913. Its full title is Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books.Little Wars is considered by some...
(1913). Little Wars is recognised today as the first recreational wargame
Miniature wargaming
Miniature wargaming is a form of wargaming that incorporates miniature figures, miniature armor and modeled terrain as the main components of play...
and Wells is regarded by gamers and hobbyists as "the Father of Miniature War Gaming".
The Fabian Society
Wells called his political views socialistSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. He was for a time a member of the socialist Fabian Society
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
, but broke with them as his creative political imagination, matching the originality shown in his fiction, outran theirs. He later grew staunchly critical of them as having a poor understanding of economics and educational reform. He ran as a Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
candidate for London University
London University (UK Parliament constituency)
London University was a university constituency electing one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, from 1868 to 1950.-Boundaries, electorate and history:...
in the 1922
United Kingdom general election, 1922
The United Kingdom general election of 1922 was held on 15 November 1922. It was the first election held after most of the Irish counties left the United Kingdom to form the Irish Free State, and was won by Andrew Bonar Law's Conservatives, who gained an overall majority over Labour, led by John...
and 1923 general elections
United Kingdom general election, 1923
-Seats summary:-References:*F. W. S. Craig, British Electoral Facts: 1832-1987*-External links:***...
after the death of his friend W. H. R. Rivers
W. H. R. Rivers
William Halse Rivers Rivers, FRCP, FRS, was an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist, best known for his work with shell-shocked soldiers during World War I. Rivers' most famous patient was the poet Siegfried Sassoon...
, but at that point his faith in the party was weak or uncertain.
Class
Social class was a theme in Wells's The Time MachineThe Time Machine
The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 for the first time and later adapted into at least two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It indirectly inspired many more works of fiction...
in which the Time Traveller speaks of the future world, with its two races, as having evolved from
the gradual widening of the present (19th century) merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer ... Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth? Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people ... is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion.
Nevertheless, Wells has this very same Time Traveller speak in terms antithetical to much of socialist thought, referring approvingly and as "perfect" and with no social problem unsolved, to an imagined world of stark class division between the rich assured of their wealth and comfort, and the rest of humanity assigned to lifelong toil:
Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved.
World Government
His most consistent political ideal was the World StateWorld government
World government is the notion of a single common political authority for all of humanity. Its modern conception is rooted in European history, particularly in the philosophy of ancient Greece, in the political formation of the Roman Empire, and in the subsequent struggle between secular authority,...
. He stated in his autobiography that from 1900 onward he considered a World State inevitable. He envisioned the state to be a planned society that would advance science, end nationalism, and allow people to progress by merit rather than birth.
World War I
He supported Britain in the First World War, despite his many criticisms of British policy, and opposed, in 1916, moves for an early peace. In an essay published that year he acknowledged that he could not understand those British pacifists who were reconciled to "handing over great blocks of the black and coloured races to the [German Empire] to exploit and experiment upon" and that the extent of his own pacifism depended in the first instance upon an armed peace, with "England keep[ing] to England and Germany to Germany". State boundaries would be established according to natural ethnic affinities, rather than by planners in distant imperial capitals, and overseen by his envisaged world alliance of states.In his book In the Fourth Year published in 1918 he suggested how each nation of the world would elect, "upon democratic lines" by proportional representation
Proportional representation
Proportional representation is a concept in voting systems used to elect an assembly or council. PR means that the number of seats won by a party or group of candidates is proportionate to the number of votes received. For example, under a PR voting system if 30% of voters support a particular...
, an electoral college
Electoral college
An electoral college is a set of electors who are selected to elect a candidate to a particular office. Often these represent different organizations or entities, with each organization or entity represented by a particular number of electors or with votes weighted in a particular way...
in the manner of the United States of America, in turn to select its delegate to the proposed League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
. This international body he contrasted with imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, not only the imperialism of Germany, against which the war was being fought, but also the imperialism, which he considered more benign, of Britain and France.
His values and political thinking came under increasing criticism from the 1920s and afterwards.
The Soviet Union
The leadership of Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
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 in an article in the left-leaning New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
magazine, "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 course of his visit to the Soviet Union in 1934, he debated the merits of reformist
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
socialism over Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
with Stalin.
Eugenics
Wells believed in the theory of eugenicsEugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
. In 1904 he discussed a survey paper by Francis Galton
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...
, co-founder of eugenics, saying "I believe ... It is in the sterilisation of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies". Some contemporary supporters even suggested connections between the "degenerate" man-creatures portrayed in The Time Machine and Wells's eugenic beliefs. For example, the economist Irving Fisher
Irving Fisher
Irving Fisher was an American economist, inventor, and health campaigner, and one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation often regarded as belonging instead to the Post-Keynesian school.Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and...
said in a 1912 address to the Eugenics Research Association: "The Nordic race will ... vanish or lose its dominance if, in fact, the whole human race does not sink so low as to become the prey, as H. G. Wells images, of some less degenerate animal!"
Zionism
Wells had given some moderate, unenthusiastic support for TerritorialismTerritorialism
Territorialism, also known as Statism , was a Jewish political movement calling for creation of a sufficiently large and compact Jewish territory , not necessarily in the Land of Israel and not necessarily fully autonomous.-Development of territorialism:Before 1905 some Zionist leaders took...
before the First World War, but later became a bitter opponent of the Zionist movement in general. He saw Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
as an exclusive and separatist movement which challenged the collective solidarity he advocated in his vision of a world state. No supporter of Jewish identity in general, Wells had in his utopian writings predicted the ultimate assimilation of Jewry.
Other endeavours
Wells brought his interest in Art & Design and politics together when he and other notables signed a memorandum to the Permanent Secretaries of the Board of Trade, among others. The November 1914 memorandum expressed the signatories concerns about British industrial design in the face of foreign competition. The suggestions were accepted, leading to the foundation of the Design and Industries AssociationDesign and Industries Association
The Design and Industries Association is a United Kingdom charity whose object is to engage with all those who share a common interest in the contribution that design can make to the delivery of goods and services that are sustainable and enhance the quality of life for communities and the...
.
In the end his contemporary political impact was limited. His efforts regarding the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
became a disappointment as the organisation turned out to be a weak one unable to prevent World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The war itself increased the pessimistic side of his nature. In his last book Mind at the End of its Tether (1945) 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".
Religion
Wells wrote in his book God the Invisible King that his idea of God did not draw upon the traditional religions of the world: "This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious belief of the writer. [Which] is a profound belief in a personal and intimate God". Later in the work he aligns himself with a "renascent or modern religion ... neither atheist nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian ... [that] he has found growing up in himself".Of Christianity he has this to say: "... it is not now true for me ... Every believing Christian is, I am sure, my spiritual brother ... but if systemically I called myself a Christian I feel that to most men I should imply too much and so tell a lie." Of other world religions he writes: "All these religions are true for me as Canterbury Cathedral is a true thing and as a Swiss chalet is a true thing. There they are, and they have served a purpose, they have worked. Only they are not true for me to live in them ... They do not work for me."
Final years
He spent his final years venting his frustration at various targets which included a neighbour who erected a large sign to a servicemen's club, and being hostile towards the Catholic Church. Wells's literary reputation declined as he spent his later years promoting causes that were rejected by most of his contemporaries. G. K. ChestertonG. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
quipped: "Mr. Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message."
Wells was a diabetic
Diabetes mellitus
Diabetes mellitus, often simply referred to as diabetes, is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the body does not produce enough insulin, or because cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced...
, and a co-founder in 1934 of what is now Diabetes UK
Diabetes UK
Diabetes UK is a patient, healthcare professional and research charity dedicated to improving the lives of people with diabetes and to working towards a future without the chronic condition diabetes....
, the leading charity for people living with diabetes in the UK.
On 28 October 1940 Wells was interviewed by Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, who two years previous had performed an infamous radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds (radio)
The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938, and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker...
, on KTSA
KTSA
KTSA is a News-Talk formatted radio station in San Antonio, Texas. The weekday schedule offers 10 hours of local talk, hosted by Trey Ware , Jack Riccardi , and Sean Rima . KTSA also carries all three hours of "The Dave Ramsey Show" live . Evening and overnight hours include programming from...
radio in San Antonio, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. In the interview, Wells admitted his surprise at the widespread panic that resulted from the broadcast, but acknowledged his debt to Welles for increasing sales of one of his "more obscure" titles.
He died of unspecified causes on 13 August 1946 at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park
Regent's Park
Regent's Park is one of the Royal Parks of London. It is in the north-western part of central London, partly in the City of Westminster and partly in the London Borough of Camden...
, London, aged 79. Some reports indicate the cause of death was diabetes or liver cancer. In his preface to the 1941 edition of The War in the Air
The War in the Air
The War in the Air is a novel by H. G. Wells, written in 1907, serialized and published in 1908 in the Pall Mall Magazine. Like many of Wells’s works, it is notable for its prophetic ideas, images, and concepts, in this case, the use of the aircraft for the purpose of warfare and the coming of...
, Wells had stated that his epitaph
Epitaph
An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively. Some are specified by the dead person beforehand, others chosen by those responsible for the burial...
should be: "I told you so. You damned fools." He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium
Golders Green Crematorium
Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain. The land for the crematorium was purchased in 1900, costing £6,000, and was opened in 1902 by Sir Henry Thompson....
on 16 August 1946 and his ashes were scattered at sea. A commemorative blue plaque
Blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event, serving as a historical marker....
in his honour was installed at his home in Regent's Park.
In popular fiction
H. G. Wells has been portrayed in a number of novels, films, and games, including:- The novel The Time ShipsThe Time ShipsThe Time Ships is a 1995 science fiction novel by Stephen Baxter. A sequel to The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, it was officially authorized by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original's publication. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Philip K. Dick Award in 1996, as...
, by British author Stephen BaxterStephen BaxterStephen Baxter is a prolific British hard science fiction author. He has degrees in mathematics and engineering.- Writing style :...
, was designated by the Wells estate as an authorised sequel to The Time MachineThe Time MachineThe Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 for the first time and later adapted into at least two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It indirectly inspired many more works of fiction...
, marking the centenary of its publication, and features characters, situations and technobabbleTechnobabbleTechnobabble , also called technospeak, is a form of prose using jargon, buzzwords, esoteric language, specialized technical terms, or technical slang that is incomprehensible to the listener...
from several of Wells's stories, as well as a representation of Wells (unnamed, and referred to as 'my friend, the Author'). - Christopher Priest's novel The Space Machine thematically references both The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds.
- The first volume of the graphic series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by Alan MooreAlan MooreAlan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
and Kevin O'NeillKevin O'Neill (comics)Kevin O'Neill is an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law , and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .-Early career:...
features cavorite, the fictional substance from Well's The First Men in the Moon. In addition the second volume includes Wells's character Doctor Moreau. - In the film adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (film) the character of an Invisible thief is inspired by H.G Well's novel The Invisible ManThe Invisible ManThe Invisible Man is a science fiction novella by H.G. Wells published in 1897. Wells' novel was originally serialised in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, and published as a novel the same year...
. The character namely Rodney Skinner was specially created, due to copyright issues regarding H.G. Wells's original novel. In his comic book "League" incarnation, Skinner is a thief who stole the invisibility formula from (we are led to assume) the original novel's anti-hero GriffinGriffinThe griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle... - In C. S. LewisC. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
's novel That Hideous StrengthThat Hideous StrengthThat Hideous Strength is a 1945 novel by C. S. Lewis, the final book in Lewis's theological science fiction Space Trilogy. The events of this novel follow those of Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra and once again feature the philologist Elwin Ransom...
, the character Jules is a caricature of Wells, and much of Lewis's science fiction was written both under the influence of Wells and as an antithesis to his work (or, as he put it, an "exorcism" of the influence it had on him). The devoutly Christian Lewis was especially incensed at Wells's The Shape of Things to ComeThe Shape of Things to ComeThe Shape of Things to Come is a work of science fiction by H. G. Wells, published in 1933, which speculates on future events from 1933 until the year 2106. The book is dominated by Wells's belief in a world state as the solution to mankind's problems....
where a future world governmentWorld governmentWorld government is the notion of a single common political authority for all of humanity. Its modern conception is rooted in European history, particularly in the philosophy of ancient Greece, in the political formation of the Roman Empire, and in the subsequent struggle between secular authority,...
systematically persecutes and completely obliterates Christianity (and all other religions), which the book presents as a positive and vitally necessary act. (Lewis had, however, kind words to say for Wells as an author; in a note at the beginning of Out of the Silent PlanetOut of the Silent PlanetOut of the Silent Planet is the first novel of a science fiction trilogy written by C. S. Lewis, sometimes referred to as the Space Trilogy, Ransom Trilogy or Cosmic Trilogy. The other volumes are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, and a fragment of a sequel was published posthumously as The...
, he writes, "Certain slighting references to earlier stories of this type which will be found in the following pages have been put there for purely dramatic purposes. The author would be sorry if any reader supposed he was too stupid to have enjoyed Mr. H. G. Wells's fantasies or too ungrateful to acknowledge his debt to them.") - Wells's photo appears on a stairway wall of time traveller Alex Hartdegen's New York brownstoneBrownstoneBrownstone is a brown Triassic or Jurassic sandstone which was once a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States to refer to a terraced house clad in this material.-Types:-Apostle Island brownstone:...
, in a 2002 version of The Time MachineThe Time Machine (2002 film)The Time Machine is a 2002 American science fiction film loosely adapted from the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells, and the 1960 film screenplay by David Duncan...
, directed by Wells's great-grandson Simon WellsSimon WellsSimon Wells is an English-American film director of animation and live-action films. He is the great grandson of famous author, H. G. Wells.Born in Cambridge, he attended De Montfort University where he studied audio-visual design...
. The 1960 movie versionThe Time Machine (1960 film)The Time Machine is a 1960 American science fiction film based on the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells in which a man in Victorian England constructs a time-travelling machine which he uses to travel to the future...
has a plate on the Time Machine telling that it had been manufactured by "H. George Wells" (a.k.a. George, the protagonist of the film). - Arthur Sammler, the main character of Saul BellowSaul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
's Mr. Sammler's PlanetMr. Sammler's PlanetMr. Sammler's Planet is a 1970 novel by the American author Saul Bellow. It was awarded the National Book Award for fiction in 1971.- Plot synopsis :Mr...
, 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 HolocaustThe HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
survivor and self-made philosopher Sammler has decidedly mixed feelings. - Wells appears as the protagonist in the 1979 film Time After TimeTime After Time (1979 film)Time After Time is a 1979 American fantasy film written and directed by Nicholas Meyer. His screenplay is based largely on a novel by Karl Alexander and a story by Steve Hayes. It concerns British author H. G...
, and in the novel The Martian WarThe Martian WarThe Martian War: A Thrilling Eyewitness Account of the Recent Invasion As Reported by Mr. H.G. Wells is a 2006 science fiction novel by Kevin J. Anderson . It is a retelling of H.G...
by Kevin J. AndersonKevin J. AndersonKevin J. Anderson is an American science fiction author with over forty bestsellers. He has written spin-off novels for Star Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E., and The X-Files, and with Brian Herbert is the co-author of the Dune prequels...
(as "Gabriel Mesta"). Both works use the conceit that Wells's works were based upon actual adventures he had. In the film Time After Time, he meets and falls in love with a woman named Amy Robbins (the name of his real-life second wife). - In an episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of SupermanLois & Clark: The New Adventures of SupermanLois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was a live-action American television series based on the Superman comic books...
, titled "Tempus Fugitive", a time-travelling H. G. Wells (Terry KiserTerry KiserTerry Kiser is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of the dead title-character in the comedy Weekend at Bernie's, and its sequel, Weekend at Bernie's II....
) seeks out Superman's help to stop a criminal from the future whom Wells had accidentally unleashed on the present. The concept of Wells's time machine being stolen and used for evil closely resembles the plot of Time After Time. Both H. G. Wells and the criminal Tempus (Lane Davies) returned for three later episodes. - In an adventure in the BBC's Doctor WhoDoctor WhoDoctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, the two-part, 90-minute "TimelashTimelashTimelash is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in two weekly parts from 9–16 March 1985.-Synopsis:...
", the time-travelling Doctor (Colin BakerColin BakerColin Baker is a British actor who is known for playing Paul Merroney in The Brothers from 1974 to 1976 and as the sixth incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who, from 1984 to 1986.- Background:Colin Baker was born in London, but moved north to...
) encounters an excitable young man, Herbert, in the Scottish HighlandsScottish HighlandsThe Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands". It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands...
, taking him on an adventure that is revealed to have been inspirational when it is finally realised this is the pre-published Wells. - In Ben BovaBen BovaBenjamin William Bova is an American science-fiction author and editor. He is the recipient of six Hugo Awards for Best Professional Editor for his work at Analog Science Fiction in the 1970's.-Personal life:...
's short story "Inspiration", the narrator gets Wells to meet a young Albert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
and Lord Kelvin. In the end of the story he (Wells) gave a tip to a 6-year-old Adolf HitlerAdolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. - The movie The Librarian: Quest for the SpearThe Librarian: Quest for the SpearThe Librarian: Quest for the Spear is the first in The Librarian franchise of movies which was originally released on American cable channel TNT in December 2004, directed by Peter Winther and starring Noah Wyle in the title role....
, ends with the main character, Flynn Carsen, getting a mission to retrieve H. G. Wells's Time MachineTime travelTime travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
. - Newt GingrichNewt GingrichNewton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....
, former Speaker of the United States House of RepresentativesSpeaker of the United States House of RepresentativesThe Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, or Speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives...
and staunch RepublicanRepublican Party (United States)The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
, praised Wells in his book To Renew America, writing, "Our generation is still seeking its Jules VerneJules VerneJules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
or H. G. Wells to dazzle our imaginations with hope and optimism." - In the movie The Maltese FalconThe Maltese Falcon (1941 film)The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name...
Kasper Gutman recounts the history of the bird emphasising that "Those are facts, historical facts, not school book history, not Mr. Wells' history, but facts nevertheless." - In the science/historical fiction novel And Having Writ..., Wells is a major character.
- Wells is a major character in John Kessel'sJohn KesselJohn Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer and the author of two solo novels, Good News From Outer Space and Corrupting Dr...
award-winning short story "Buffalo", first printed in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science FictionThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science FictionThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is a digest-size American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House and then by Fantasy House. Both were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Publications, which took over as publisher in 1958. Spilogale, Inc...
, February, 1991. - H. G. Wells makes an appearance in Chapter 10 of The Hollow Lands by Michael MoorcockMichael MoorcockMichael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....
. This being the second book in The Dancers at the End of TimeThe Dancers at the End of TimeThe title of this volume comes from the poem "The Last Word" by Ernest Dowson.Reunited at the end of Time, Jherek and the other inhabitants of the End of Time have returned to their preferred amusements of parties and games. They are interrupted by a ship of alien musician/pirates, the Lat...
series. The hero has gone back in time and needs help returning to the future. - Woody AllenWoody AllenWoody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
's comedy film SleeperSleeper (film)Sleeper is a 1973 futuristic science fiction comedy film, written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, and directed by Allen. The plot involves the adventures of the owner of a Greenwich Village, NY health food store played by Woody Allen who is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and defrosted 200...
(1973) is loosely based on Wells's novel, When the Sleeper AwakesThe Sleeper AwakesThe Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian novel by H. G. Wells about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has become the richest man in the world...
. - The Infinite Worlds of H. G. WellsThe Infinite Worlds of H. G. WellsThe Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells is a four-hour miniseries conceived by Nick Willing and released in 2001 by the Hallmark Channel. It is based on a number of short stories by H. G. Wells, and in some territories was titled The Scientist.-Production:...
is a 4-hour dramatisation of the origin of several of Wells's stories. Originally made for TV, the series has been released on DVD. - In Libba BrayLibba BrayLibba Bray is an author of young adult novels, including the books A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, The Sweet Far Thing and Going Bovine....
's novel The Sweet Far ThingThe Sweet Far ThingThe Sweet Far Thing is a novel by Libba Bray that was released on December 26, 2007. It is the sequel to the best-selling A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels....
, H. G. Wells makes an appearance in chapter twenty-four. - Ronald WrightRonald WrightRonald Wright is a Canadian author who has written books of travel, history and fiction. His nonfiction includes the bestseller Stolen Continents, winner of the Gordon Montador Award and chosen as a book of the year by the Independent and the Sunday Times...
's 1998 novel A Scientific Romance imagines that a Wells contemporary built a working time machine, which the protagonist uses to travel 500 years into the future, where he explores England which has become overgrown with jungle, and the few remaining people live in stone age conditions with peculiar remnants of civilisation. - The sci-fi television show Warehouse 13Warehouse 13Warehouse 13 is an American fantasy television series that premiered on July 7, 2009 on the Syfy network.Executive-produced by Jack Kenny and David Simkins, the dramatic comedy from Universal Media Studios has been described as borrowing much from 1980s television series Friday the 13th: The...
prominently includes H. G. Wells as one of its Warehouse agents. Wells, acted by Jaime MurrayJaime MurrayJaime Murray is an English actress, best known for playing Stacie Monroe in Hustle and Lila Tournay in season two of the Showtime series Dexter. She has also had recurring roles as H.G...
, is portrayed as a female.
Further reading
- Dickson, LovatLovat DicksonLovat Dickson, born Horatio Henry Lovat Dickson was a notable publisher and writer, the first Canadian to have a major publishing role in Britain. He is best known today for his biographies of Grey Owl, Richard Hillary, Radclyffe Hall and H. G. Wells...
. H.G. Wells: His Turbulent Life & Times. 1969. - Gilmour, David. The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002 (paperback, ISBN 0-374-18702-9); 2003 (paperback, ISBN 0-374-52896-9).
- Gomme, A. W.Arnold Wycombe GommeArnold Wycombe Gomme was a British classical scholar, Lecturer in Greek and Greek History , Professor of Greek, University of Glasgow . Fellow of the British Academy .-Life:...
, Mr. Wells as Historian. Glasgow: MacLehose, Jackson, and Co., 1921. - Gosling, John. Waging the War of the Worlds. Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland, 2009 (paperback, ISBN 0786441054).
- Mauthner, Martin. German Writers in French Exile, 1933–1940, London: Vallentine and Mitchell, 2007, ISBN 9780853035404.
- West, Anthony. H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life. London: Hutchinson, 1984.