A little more than two months ago, the English writer H.G.Wells would complete 150 years old, so this post is a tribute to him. The wide range of his works always concern the improvement of the world, the fight against injustice and for human rights, and a more productive, full and fair existence. This post is a summary of five articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells, The second was published with the incomplete title above at https://kcls.org/blogs/post/happy-150th-birthday-to-h-g-wells/. The third was published at http://www.newstatesman.com/node/193726. The fourth was published at http://www.wnrf.org/cms/hgwells.shtml. The fifth was published at http://www.bookslut.com/small_but_perfectly_formed/2005_04_005019.php
Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) Known as H. G. Wells was a prolific English writer in many genres, including novel, history, politics, social commentary and textbooks. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a "father of science fiction, along with Julio Verne. His most notable science fiction works include: The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). His later works became increasingly political and didactic. Novels like Kipps and The History of Mr. Polly, which describe lower-middle class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. A diabetic, in 1934, Wells co-funded The Diabetic Association. His father was a shopkeeper and professional cricket player, H.G.Wells was the fourth and last child. When his mother returned to work as a ladys's maid at Uppark, a country house in Sussex. For H. Wells, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself, reading many classics works. This would be the beginning of H. Wells's venture into literature. In 1880, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, studying Biology. 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, thanks to his schoolarship, yet in his Experiment in Autobiography, he speaks of constantly being hungry. He was also among the founders of The Science School Journal, a magazine that allow him to express his views on literature and society, as well as trying his hand at fiction; a precursor to his novel The Time Machine was published in the journal under the title "The Chronic Argonauts". In 1890 Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of London, in the same year he finds a post as a teacher at Henley School. His first published work was a text-book of Biology in 1893. Some of his early novels, called "scientific romances", invented several themes now classic in science fiction. He also wrote realistic novels, including Kipps and Tono-Bungay. Wells also wrote dozens of short stories. According to James Gunn, one of Wells' major contributions to the science fiction was his approach, in his opinion the author should always strive to make the story as credible as possible. Wells also wrote nonfiction. Wells first nonfiction bestseller was Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scienctific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) When serialised in a magazine it was subtitled, "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicity 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 European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950 and successful submarines) His bestselling two-volume work, The Outline of History (1920) began a new era of popularised world history. Wells reprised his outline work in 1922 with a much shorter popular work, A Short History of the World. Wells also wrote a dystopian novel, When the sleeper Wakes (1899).
In celebration of H.G.Wells' 150th birthday, we present the list of movies based on his creation available. He was the author of many extraordinary stories that , even today, inspire people. "Visionary' is not a grand enough word to describe him. Many of his books are shelved in our Teen Classic Collection, because a lot of American educators believe they are must-reads for our youth.I know this, because students come to our libraries looking for these titles at the beginning of every school year. These are great pieces of history in the science-fiction genre, written before the genre even existed. In the end of his life, Wells was a strong social activist.
At the beginning of the second world war, H.G.Wells wrote a letter to the newspaper Times attached to a draft "Declaration of Rights". The celebrated author called for a set of written principles to clarify what people were fighting for. His point was that fundamental rights were not just legal entitlements, but a set of values, perhaps the only values powerful enough to inspire and bind a nation. Wells called for a great debate on the issue, and the newspaper Daily Herald obliged. It made a page a day available for a month for a discussion of the articles in the draft declaration. The final version of the Declaration was published in February 1940. The declaration was translated into 30 languages. After some further lobbying, this goal was reflected in the founding charter of the U.N. Wells traced a line between the Magna carta, the 1689 and his own vision of fundamental rights. One hundred and fifty years before Wells' efforts, Tom Paine's booklet, The Rights of Man, had endorsed France's newly Declaration of Rights. First published in 1791, it was a bestseller. Virtually the entire democratic world incorporated human rights treaties into their laws.
The importance of H.G.Wells to the development of future studies lied not only in what he wrote, but in his influence on later thinkers. Every field of study, like every nation, has its founding fathers and mothers. Figures of history, they help give the incoming generations a sense of identity. they supply standards by which to measure the performance of new practitioners. Examples spring easily to mind. In modern physics, Galileo and Newton; in economics, Adam Smith and the French physiocrats; in history as an academic discipline, Leopold von Ranke. But who 'founded' the study of the future? The answer is unsurprising, yet not as obvious as perhaps it should be. The founder of future studies was the English novelist and journalist 'par excellence' H.G.Wells. The keystone of Wells' futurism is a volume now more than eighty years old. Usually cited as Anticipations, it was the first comprehensive and widely read survey of future developments. Wells' book represented a peak in human self-awareness. Anticipations ranged widely in its subject matter, from the future of transport to the future of world order.
A little over a century ago, H.G.Wells began the sort of literary career that just does not exist today. Bouncing over modern genre boundaries, he produced a vast number of books: sci-fic, fantasy, mystery, feminist fiction, political novels, social comedies, etc. Though his later books tended to be more didactic, the majority of his works still deserve to be ready today. It is his role as the founding father of sci-fic for which he is perhaps best known. Wells was the first to properly explore the ideas and ramifications of most of sci-fic's preocupations: alien invasion, journeys to other planets, time travel, biological manipulation, nuclear war, bio-weapons, totalitarian states, and more. If you like Wells, the writer with whom he is most often compared, Jules Verne, is in fact a very different sort, more interested in fantastic travelogues than in mind-boogling ideas. It is also worth reading the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World, in particular. Wells' social or problem novels could be fairly compared to those of George Gissing, or Jerome K. But in many ways, Wells has no peers. He did too much too well for any easy comparisons to be made.
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