Everything about H G Wells totally explained
Herbert George Wells (
21 September 1866 –
13 August 1946), better known as
H. G. Wells, was an
English writer most famous today for his
science fiction novels
The Time Machine,
The War of the Worlds,
The Invisible Man,
The First Men in the Moon and
The Island of Dr Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was an outspoken
socialist, his later works becoming increasingly political and didactic. Only his early science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells and
Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".
Biography
Early life
Herbert George Wells, fourth and last child of Joseph Wells (a former domestic gardener, and at the time shopkeeper and
cricketer) and his wife Sarah Neal (a former
domestic servant), was born at Atlas House, 47 High Street,
Bromley, in the
county of
Kent. The family was of the impoverished lower-middle-
class. An inheritance had allowed them to purchase a china shop, though they quickly realised it would never be a prosperous concern: the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. They managed to earn a meagre income, but little of it came from the shop. Joseph sold cricket bats and balls and other equipment at the matches he played at, and received an unsteady amount of money from the matches, since at that time there were no professional cricketers, and payment for skilled bowlers and batters 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'd in 1874, when he was seven years old, which left him bedridden with a broken leg.), until he won a scholarship to the
Normal School of Science (later the
Royal College of Science, now part of
Imperial College London) in London, studying
biology under
T. H. Huxley. As an alumnus, he later helped to set up the
Royal College of Science Association, of which he became the first president in 1909. Wells studied in his new school until 1887 with a weekly allowance of twenty-one
shillings (a
guinea) thanks to his scholarship. This was a comfortable sum of money: at the time many
working class families had "round about a pound a week" as their entire household income.
He soon entered the Debating Society of the school. These years mark the beginning of his interest in a possible reformation of society. At first approaching the subject through studying
The Republic by
Plato, he soon turned to contemporary ideas of
socialism as expressed by the recently formed
Fabian Society and free lectures delivered at
Kelmscott House, the home of
William Morris. He was also among the founders of
The Science School Journal, a school magazine which allowed him to express his views on literature and society. The school year 1886-1887 was the last year of his studies. 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 loss of his scholarship. It wasn't until 1890 that Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from the
University of London External Programme.
Upon leaving the Normal School of Science, Wells was left without a source of income. His aunt Mary, a cousin of his father, invited him to stay with her for a while, so at least he didn't face the problem of housing. During his stay with his aunt, he grew interested in her daughter, Isabel.
Private life
In 1891 Wells
married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells, but left her in 1894 for one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins, whom he married in 1895. He had two sons by Amy:
George Philip (known as 'Gip') in 1901 and Frank Richard in 1903.
During his marriage to Amy, Wells had
liaisons with a number of women, including the
American birth-control activist and
eugenicist Margaret Sanger and novelist
Elizabeth von Arnim. In 1909 he'd a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer
Amber Reeves, In spite of Amy Catherine's knowledge of some of these affairs, she remained married to Wells until her death in 1927.
Games
Seeking a more structured way to play war games, Wells 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."
Writer
Wells's first
bestseller was
Anticipations (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 didn't 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 romances", 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 and
The First Men in the Moon (which have all been made into films). He also wrote other, non-fantastic novels which have received critical acclaim, including
Kipps and the satire on Edwardian advertising,
Tono-Bungay.
Wells also wrote several dozen short stories and novellas, the best known of which is "
The Country of the Blind" (1904). Besides being an important occurrence of blindness in literature, this is Wells's commentary on humanity's ability to overcome any inconvenience after a few generations and think that it's normal.
His short story "The New Accelerator" was the inspiration for the Star Trek episode
Wink of an Eye.
Though
Tono-Bungay wasn't 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 didn't see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands."
Leó Szilárd acknowledged that the book inspired him to theorise the
nuclear chain reaction.
Wells also wrote nonfiction. His bestselling two-volume work,
The Outline of History (1920), began a new era of popularised world history. It received a mixed critical response from professional historians, but was praised by
Arnold J. Toynbee as the best introductory history available.
(External Link
) 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(External Link), 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
Utopian novels. Usually starting with the world rushing to catastrophe, until people realise a better way of living: whether by mysterious gases from a
comet causing people to behave rationally (
In the Days of the Comet), or a world council of scientists taking over, as in
The Shape of Things to Come (1933, which he later adapted for the 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 social reconstruction through the rise of
fascist dictators in
The Autocracy of Mr Parham (1930) and
The Holy Terror (1939).
Wells contemplates the ideas of
nature vs. nurture and questions humanity in books like
The Island of Doctor Moreau. Not all his scientific romances ended in a happy Utopia, as the
dystopian
When the Sleeper Wakes (1899, rewritten as
The Sleeper Awakes, 1910) shows.
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
Houyhnhnms, he finds himself unable to shake off the perceptions of his fellow humans as barely civilised beasts, slowly reverting back to their animal natures.
Wells also wrote the preface for the first edition of
W. N. P. Barbellion's diaries,
The Journal of a Disappointed Man, published in 1919. Since "Barbellion" was the real author's
pen-name, many reviewers believed Wells to have been the true author of the
Journal; Wells always denied this, despite being full of praise for the diaries, but the rumours persisted until Barbellion's death later that year.
In 1927,
Florence Deeks sued Wells for
plagiarism, claiming that he'd stolen much of the content of
The Outline of History from a work,
The Web, she'd submitted to the Canadian Macmillan Company, but who held onto the manuscript for eight months before rejecting it. Despite numerous similarities in phrasing and factual errors, the court found Wells not guilty.
In 1934 Wells predicted that another world war would begin in 1940, a prediction which ultimately came true.
(External Link)
In 1936, before the
Royal Institution of Great Britain, Wells called for the compilation of a constantly growing and changing World
Encyclopaedia, 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 intellectuals and politicians slated for immediate liquidation upon the invasion of England in the abandoned
Operation Sea Lion. The name "H. G. Wells" appeared high on the list for the "crime" of being a
socialist. Wells, as president of the International
PEN (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.
Politics
Wells called his political views
socialist. He was for a time a member of the socialist
Fabian Society, but broke with them as he intended them to be an organisation far more radical than they wanted. 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.
His most consistent political ideal was the
World State. 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 will advance science, end nationalism, and allow people to advance by merit rather than birth. During his work on the
United Nations Charter, he opposed any mention of democracy. He feared the average citizen could never be educated or aware enough to decide major world issues. Therefore he favoured suffrage to be limited to scientists, organisers, engineers, and others of merit. On the other hand, he strongly believed citizens should have as much freedom as possible without restricting the freedom of others. These values came under increasing criticism from the 1920s and afterwards.
Lenin's attempts at reconstructing the shattered
Russian economy, as his account of a visit (
Russia in the Shadows; 1920) shows, also related towards that. This is because at first he believed Lenin might lead to the kind of planned world he envisioned. This was in spite of the fact that he was a strongly anti-Marxist socialist who would later state that it would've been better if
Karl Marx was never born.
The leadership of
Joseph Stalin led to a change in his view of the Soviet Union even though his initial impression of Stalin himself was mixed. He disliked what he saw as a narrow orthodoxy and obdurance to the facts in Stalin. However he did give him some praise saying 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 end his contemporary political impact was limited. His efforts to help form 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." He spent his final years venting this frustration at various targets which included a neighbour who erected a large sign to a servicemen's club. As he devoted his final decades toward causes which were largely rejected by contemporaries, this caused his literary reputation to decline. One critic said, "Mr. Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message."
Wells, like many in his time, believed in the theory of
eugenics. 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, this is what
Irving Fisher, the economist, said in his 1912 presidential address to the Eugenics Research Association: "The Nordic race will... vanish or lose its dominance if, in fact, the whole human race doesn't sink so low as to become the prey, as H. G. Wells images, of some less degenerate animal!"
Legacy
Wells, a
diabetic, died of unspecified causes on
13 August 1946 at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace,
Regent's Park, London, although 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." but his wish wasn't granted as he was cremated on
16 August 1946 and his ashes later scattered at sea. A commemorative
blue plaque in his honour was installed at his home in Regent's Park.
In his lifetime and after his death, Wells was considered a prominent socialist thinker. In later years, however, Wells's image has shifted and he's now regarded as one of the pioneers of science fiction. Wells was a co-founder in 1934 of what is now
Diabetes UK, the leading charity for people living with diabetes in the UK.
In popular fiction
H. G. Wells has been portrayed in a number of novels and films, including:
- The novel The Time Ships, by British author Stephen Baxter, was designated by the Wells estate as an authorised sequel to The Time Machine, marking the centenary of its publication, and features characters, situations and technobabble from several of Wells's stories, as well as a representation of Wells (unnamed, and referred to as 'my friend, the Author').
- In C. S. Lewis's novel That Hideous Strength, 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. The devoutly Christian Lewis was especially incensed at Wells's The Shape of Things to Come where a future world government systematically persecutes and completely obliterates Christianity (and all other religions), which the book presents as a positive and vitally necessary act.
- Wells's photo appears on a stairway wall of time traveller Alex Hartdegen's New York brownstone, in a 2002 version of The Time Machine, directed by Wells's great-grandson Simon Wells. The 1960 movie version 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 Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet, knew Wells, and is urged by other characters to use that fact as the basis for writing a biography of Wells, a project about which Holocaust survivor and self-made philosopher Sammler has decidedly mixed feelings.
- Wells appears as the protagonist in the 1979 film Time After Time, and in the novel The Martian War by Kevin J. Anderson (as "Gabriel Mesta"). Both works use the conceit that Wells's works were based upon actual adventures he had.
- In an episode of, entitled Tempus Fugitive, a time-travelling H. G. Wells (Terry Kiser) 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 returned for three later episodes.
- In an adventure in the BBC's Doctor Who, the two-part, 90-minute Timelash, the time-travelling Doctor encounters an excitable young man, Herbert, in the Scottish Highlands, taking him on an adventure that's revealed to have been inspirational when it's finally realised this is the pre-published Wells.
- In the Disney Channel series Phil of the Future, the title character attends a fictional school named H. G. Wells Junior High, the name of the school possibly drawn from the show's science fiction manner.
- In Ben Bova's short story "Inspiration", the narrator gets Wells to meet a young Albert Einstein and Lord Kelvin. In the end of the story he (Wells) gave a tip to a 6 year old Adolf Hitler.
- The movie Librarian:Quest for The Spear, ends with the main character, Flynn Carsen, getting a mission to retrieve H. G. Wells's Time Machine.
- Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and staunch Republican, praised Wells in his book To Renew America, writing "Our generation is still seeking its Jules Verne or H. G. Wells to dazzle our imaginations with hope and optimism". It should be noted, however, that even though Mr. Gingrich has written science fiction himself, he was speaking as a politician, not as a literary critic.
- In the movie The Maltese Falcon Kasper Gutman recounts the history of the bird emphasizing 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 makes an appearance in the Stargate SG-1 book Roswell.
- H. G. Wells makes an appearance in Chapter 10 of The Hollow Lands by Michael Moorcock. This being the second book in The Dancers at the End of Time series. The hero has gone back in time and needs help returning to the future.
- Woody Allen's comedy film Sleeper is loosely based on Wells's novel, When the Sleeper Awakes.
Works
Honours
H. G. Wells crater on the far side of the Moon is named for him.
H. G. Wells was a honorary fellow of the Imperial College of Science and TechnologyFurther Information
Get more info on 'H G Wells'.
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