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H.G. Wells Sees It Through

© Charles R. Keller II

H.G. WELLS SEES IT THROUGH By Charles R. Keller II The H.G. Wells Societies

Although his name has faded with time, the influence of H.G Wells is with us to this day. His literary blockbusters The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The First Men in the Moon remain practically household names today. Even as I write this, Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks stands ready to release its new version of The Time Machine, with H.G. Wells' own great-grandson in the director's chair. Pendragon Pictures is also developing a "dead-on accurate" film adaptation of the original text of The War of the Worlds. In sheer volume, Wells wrote more words in his career than Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare combined. Although his prolific pen did far more than just establish a literary genre in “science fiction,” these “scientific romances,” along with several short stories, were actually the very works that launched his career in the mid-1890’s.

H.G. Wells the man was as remarkable as his literature. He believed the keys to mankind’s long-term survival were education and a disciplined application of science to matters that benefited everyone. He was a life-long Socialist who despised Marxism, a devoted humanitarian, and a tireless champion of women's rights. His personal friendships ranged from political luminaries like Sir Winston Churchill, to cultural icons like George Bernard Shaw and Henry James. His tumultuous private life stood in stark contrast to the almost sentimental attachment he had for the structured - yet by no means privileged - Victorian environment he grew up in.

The perception that he was a prophet is perhaps a bit overstated; he was indeed very accurate on many counts. He foresaw the decisive use of tanks in modern warfare years before they were developed, and he described in graphic detail the destruction of cities by bombing and gas from aircraft less than five years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, and well before Bleroit made his first flight across the English Channel in 1909. The phrase we still associate with the First World War, The War That Will End War, (often misquoted as "all war") was coined by him as the title of his 1914 pamphlet addressing British anti-war advocates and pacifists. Also, that year Wells predicted with eerie accuracy a devastating world war with Germany, and a new weapon he called an “atomic bomb” in his novel The World Set Free. Though pre-dating the real atomic bombs by decades, Wells’ inventions also relied on atomic chain reactions rendering target areas uninhabitable for years.

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