<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

H. G. Wells (September 21, 1866 – August 13, 1946) The most important science fiction writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Wells' SF combined highly imaginative speculation (which Jules Verne criticized as unscientific) with a highly critical view of mankind. Best known for his novels, he was a marvelous writer of short stories as well.

Of Wells' science fiction in short form, "The Star" (1897) most clearly captures his sense of "cosmic pessimism." The story narrates the catastrophic effects on the Earth of the passing of a star near the solar system. "The Stolen Bacillus" (1894) is probably the first story to deal with the issue of biological warfare. "The Land Ironclads" (1903) inspired Winston S. Churchill to develop the tank during the First World War, and therefore may be Wells' most influential work of fiction.

Wells wrote six novels that are essential reading for anyone interested in science fiction. The Time Machine (1895) is the first modern time travel story, and deals with the future evolutionary division of mankind into two species. The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) is a riposte to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that postulates that the raising of animals' intelligence will not overcome the inherent law of the food chain. In 1897, Wells wrote The Invisible Man, illustrating that what you don't see can be as much trouble as what you can. The War of the Worlds (1898) was the first novel to deal with unpleasant aliens attacking the Earth. When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) was Wells' first stab at a dystopian future at novel length, and it is surprising today for its racism; for this and other reasons, Wells re-wrote it in 1910. And last but best of all is The First Men in the Moon (1901), Wells' excursion to the interior of the moon, which turns out to have a nasty infestation of civilized insects. All of these have been turned into films, with varying success -- some of them several times. (For those wondering who produced a film version of When the Sleeper Wakes, we would urge you to consider Woody Allen's 1973 film Sleeper as a loose parody of Wells' novel.)

After 1902 Wells largely abandoned the "scientific romance" for socially critical writing, the bulk of it increasingly didactic novels and non-fiction. Perhaps his most important work in this vein, A Modern Utopia (1905), outlines rather enthusiastically the setting up of a world state under the control of an elite group. Following the Russian revolution of 1917 and the Nazi takeover of Germany, it became clear that such a society would tend toward the authoritarian, and both Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1936) and George Orwell in 1984 (1949) allude critically to Wells' book of 1905 as having given inspiration to those who sought to build socialism in order to destroy democracy.

Further reading: Wells' short stories and novels remain in print. The best general survey of Wells' SF is Bernard Bergonzi, The Early H. G. Wells: A Study of the Scientific Romances (1961).