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Herbert George Wells was a famous English Novelist, historian, science writer, author of science fiction, and author of over one-hundred books. He was born a third son on Saturday, September twenty-first, 1866 in Bromley England. His father, Joseph, Then thirty-eight, was a poor shopkeeper in a small way who later became a professional cricketer. His mother, Sarah, then forty-three, served as a housekeeper to the Fetherstonhaugh family at Up Park, Sussex. His family was not very well off at the age of fourteen, Wells left school and sought work. He tried many different occupations, from a draper to a chemists assistant, but he failed at everything he tried.
He was usually discharged from his position within his first few weeks of working. Finally, as a student-teacher in high school subjects in 1883, he began to take interest in work. He earned such high grades that he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in south Kensington in London (Young, Kenneth. 1974). Wells joined a debating society.
He became interested in socialism, literature, history, philosophy, religion, and art. He did not work hard at his scientific studies, but did, however, become the first editor of the science schools journal. Due to all of his new interests, Wells ended up failing his examinations for his degree. He later earned a teaching diploma and a bachelor of science degree from London university in 1890, and then began to write for the educational times, which was a well known and respected news article at the time (Batchelor, 1985). It was at this point in time when Wells became such a great author. He wrote such timeless novels as The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr.
Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He also wrote novels that dealt with a lower middle class background such as Kipps (1905), and The History of Mr. Polly (1909). H. G. Wells, also a man who could tell the future, wrote the books Anticipations (1901), Mankind in the Making (1903), A Modern Utopia (1905), Tono-Bungay (1909), and The Shape of things to Come (1933) which made all the predictions upon the future.
As William J. Scheick explained, The Invisible man, must be H. G. Wells best novel. (Huntington, John. 1991). Richard H.
Costa, an author of one of Wells biographies stated that, Herbert George Wells achieved a level of fame that few writers have ever matched (Costa, Richard, H. 1967). In the three science fiction novels (The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The Food of the Gods), it is evident that Wells poses a negative outlook upon the future and the technology that goes with it. The idea of first and third-person narration in these novels helps Wells establish his point very well. The novel The Time Machine, is written in the first person as most 19 th century novels were. Unlike in most other novels, it has two separate narrations. The first type of narration come from the time travellers friend, and the second type of narration is the time traveller himself (neither are given names).
The time traveller narrates the bulk of the tale around the dinner table, but since his words are being relayed to the reader by his friend, open quotation marks exceed each paragraph (Batchelor. 1985). Wells travels in the time machine and is able to give a very vivid description of the future world. Describing the time machine he says The thing the time traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline substances (Wells, H. G. 1985. Pg. 8) When the author is there in the novel (first person point of view), it gives the reader a sense of being there also.
This makes for more believable and interesting story. Wells also tells the novel The Invisible Man from a first-person point of view. The description of Wells seeing the invisible man gives the reader a better idea of what he looks like. By Wells being there, he can convince the reader that the man is real and he can put a very clear visual picture in our heads of what his actions and vision of his stable clothes look like. The Food of the Gods is written in the third-person point of view and also provides the reader with a good image of what everything looks like. The giant animals and people gives you the impression of how something so insignificant can get out of control.
The way in which the story is told is a very important aspect of a novel and how it makes an impression on the reader is also another important aspect. Without Wells telling these novels in the way that he did, the novels would probably not be as popular as they are today. With Wells telling these great stories, he helps the reader understand the point of the novel, and he also allows the reader to view his thoughts and views in the way that he wants us to. H. G. Wells prophecies were so accurate that it made people think, What if these books can prove to be true? .
Robert Bloom, an author who had critical essays on H. G. Wells, said Wells forecasted the coming future so vividly and so well that he became known as the man who invented tomorrow. Wells was such an amazingly accurate prophet in both things big and small, everything to from super highways to overcrowded cities, to computers and television. Wells most remarkable forecasts, however, related to war. He practically invented tanks or land iron clods, as he named them.
Wells writing in the era of horse and buggy, forecast the future military use of planes (Huntington, John. 1991) In the introduction of the novel The Food of the Gods, George Hay, chairman of the H. G. Wells society says, If this man, writing so long ago, could be so deadly accurate in his diagnoses of men in their ways, it is not possible-probable, even that he remains not only our contemporary, but the man who in fact is still ahead of us. The author of one of Wells biographies, Kenneth Young, explains that, At the time Wells wrote The Time Machine, he had become very pessimistic about mankind's ability to manage the future that they had in store for themselves. This, rather than possibilities and paradoxes of time travel, composes the theme of the novel.
This theme was to recur even more strongly with the advent of two world wars and the development of the atomic bomb (Which he talks about in The Shape of things to Come). When World War II began, Wells announced that he had already composed his epitaph, and it was God damn you all! : I told you so (Young, Kenneth. 1974). In Wells novel The Time Machine, he travels to the year 801, 701 ad. , where he finds a new race, the Eloi. They are small and dim-witted humanoids. He soon discovers another race, the Morlocks, who are cannibalistic and feed off the Eloi.
As time passes on, he leaves the year 801. 701 ad. , and travels thirty million years into the future and talks about how the world is dead. Wells description of the Earth at this time says The sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and then suffering a momentary extinction. The Earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the Earth (Wells, H. G. 1895. Pg. 105) Richard H. Costa, a H.
G. Wells biography author says, Wells description of the slow death of the future Earth is as bleakly emotional description of that event as I have ever read. Costa says, Wells wrote in Mind at the End of its Tether (1945) that the end of everything is at hand and cannot be evaded. Wells might have been speaking of himself when the narrator of The Time Machine states, He, I know-for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made-thought but cheerlessly of the advancement of mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its markers in the end (Wells, H.
G. 1895. Pg. 93) Both other novels are not so much views into the future, but just view of the development of technology. The technology behind The Food of the Gods was a certain type of food that caused humans and animals to grow to enormous sizes. The food got into the ground and into the water systems and people drank it.
When the people drank it, they grew enormous and had the scientist who developed the food worrying and trying to come up with a solution to what was going on. In The Invisible Man, there is a story of a man who is following up on scientific principles, that are carefully and plausibly explained. He finds that through these principles, he can make himself turn invincible. He saw, of coarse, great possibilities in the discovery, and possibilities of great wealth and power. Although he was invisible, he was not intangible. His clothes were not invisible so he could go naked in a rather cold climate.
The food he ate was visible until digested. He gets a thousand and one bottles of this amazing invention shipped to his room and people begin to wonder. The inns owner, Mrs. Hall, calls the police and the invisible man takes off.
Frustrated, he goes on a murder spree and tries to get away from the police. Eventually he gets caught and, although invisible, he is killed. David Y. Hughes, an author of several critical essays on H. G. Wells, asks the question It leaves the reader wondering that if the people around him had bot bothered Griffin (the invisible man), would he have done the things he did?
Would some hobo end up hiding his precious notebooks, keeping the secret of the invisibility forever unknown? Perhaps its for the better (Huntington, John. 1991). Even before the author goes into time travel, there is the question of what the invention can do. Wells states the fact of four dimensions, there is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that out consciousness moves along with it. This Idea may be confused but, it is true. Why would an inventor not be able to invent a time machine after all the wonderful things that were already invented by the human race.
The Time Machine did not really show a negative effect of technology but did show a negative point of view of what is in store for us in the future. The Invisible Man and The Food of the Gods were novels that showed how technology could affect our society. One scientist who thought up a way to become invisible, corrupted a whole town and practically ruined it. The food caused an attitude of destroy or be destroyed. The themes of the three novels show a negative attitude towards the future of technology. The Time Machine, never really showed a bad point toward invention, just a bad point towards the future in general.
Wells, who played the time traveller, was very surprised by the way that the strange creatures he encountered in this new world got along with each other in perfect harmony. Little did he know that the people of the underworld were cannibalistic and still showed a touch or resemblance to the people in the original world that he did indeed come from. The Time Machine is almost a warning of how the human race is going to turn out in the long run and how eventually the Earth is going to die. The Invisible Man displayed a theme of how there are limits of invention and how people cannot really cope with being watched all the time. Griffin, the scientist, realized that everything was not going to be as easy as planned, even thought he was invisible. The Food of the Gods had a theme that resembled The Invisible Man as well.
These scientists who made the food thought they had something very good in their hands, but the novel later proved them wrong, as the food later became a symbol of danger and corruption. After the food got into the water, everything got out of control. Those who did not eat the food had three decisions, eat, destroy, or be destroyed. H. G. Wells was a great author and a person known well around the world.
His prophesies and books were mostly negative, but showed things that could happen if the human race did not shape up their act. Like Kenneth Young said Wells did not know that there were physical laws and economic laws, quantities, and reactions that all humanity voting nine contradicente cannot vote away, and that are disobeyed at the price of destruction (Young, Kenneth. 1974). He talks about the disadvantages of invention and how they will affect all mankind. Wells illustrates great pictures of what is going on in the story and gives the reader good vivid imagery.
Wells is a great reader and a good philosopher of the future. So if his pessimistic views are correct, mankind as a race, is done for. 31 c
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