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Herbert George
Wells (September 21, 1866 – August 13, 1946), better known as H. G. Wells, was an
English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The
War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The First Men in the Moon and The Island of
Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and
produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history,
and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His later works become
increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are
widely read today. Both Wells and Jules Verne are sometimes referred to as "The
Father of Science Fiction".
 Early
life
Herbert George Wells, the 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 is said to be an accident he had in 1874,
when he was seven years old, which left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass
the time he started reading, and soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives
to which books gave him access; they also stimulated his desire to write. Later
that year he entered Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy, a private school founded
in 1849 following the bankruptcy of Morley's earlier school. The teaching was
erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, on producing copperplate
handwriting and doing the sort of sums useful to tradesmen. Wells continued at
Morley's Academy until 1880. In 1877 another accident affected his life, when his
father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh. The accident effectively put an end to
Joseph's career as a cricketer, and his earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to
compensate for the loss.
No longer able to support themselves financially, the family instead sought to
place their boys as apprentices to various professions. From 1881 to 1883 Wells had
an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium. His
experiences were later used as inspiration for his novels The Wheels of Chance and
Kipps, which describe the life of a draper's apprentice as well as being a critique
of the world's distribution of wealth.
Wells's mother and father had never got along with one another particularly well
(she was a Protestant, he a free thinker), and when she went back to work as a
lady's maid (at Uppark, a country house in Sussex) one of the conditions of work
was that she would not have space for husband or children; thereafter, she and
Joseph lived separate lives, though they never divorced and neither ever developed
any other liaison. Wells not only failed at being a draper, he also failed as a
chemist's assistant and had bad experiences as a teaching assistant. After each
failure, he would arrive at Uppark - "the bad shilling back again!" as he said -
and stay there until a fresh start could be arranged for him. Fortunately for
Wells, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself.
Teacher
In 1883, Wells's employer dismissed him, claiming to be dissatisfied with him. The
young man was reportedly not displeased with this ending to his apprenticeship.
Later that year, he became an assistant teacher at Midhurst Grammar School, in West
Sussex (teaching students such as A.A. Milne), 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 an
allowance of twenty-one shillings a week thanks to his scholarship.
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 was not 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 did not 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. In 1909 he had
a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves, whose parents, William and
Maud Pember Reeves, he had met through the Fabian Society; and in 1914, a son,
Anthony West, by the novelist and feminist Rebecca West, twenty-six years his
junior. In spite of Amy Catherine's knowledge of some of these affairs, she
remained married to Wells until her death in 1927. Wells also had liaisons with
Odette Keun and Moura Budberg.
"I was never a great amorist," Wells wrote in Experiment in Autobiography (1934),
"though I have loved several people very deeply."
Artist
As one method of self-expression, Wells tended to sketch. One common location for
these sketches was the endpapers and title pages of his own books, and they covered
a wide variety of topics, from political commentary to his feelings toward his
literary contemporaries and his current romantic interests. During his marriage to
Amy Catherine, whom he nicknamed Jane, he sketched a considerable number of
pictures, many of them being overt comments on their marriage. It was during this
period, and this period only, that he called his sketches "picshuas." These
picshuas have been the topic of study by Wells scholars for many years, and
recently a book was published on the subject.
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 did not 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 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 is normal.
Though Tono-Bungay was not 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... they did not
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. 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, 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 had stolen much
of the content of The Outline of History from a work, The Web, she had 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 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, but he occasionally found himself at
odds with other socialists. He was for a time a member of the 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 also ran as a Labour Party
candidate for London University in 1922 and 1923, but even at that point his faith
in that 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. The
details of this state varied but in general it would be a planned society that
would advance science, end nationalism, and allow people to advance solely by merit
rather than birth. He also was consistent that it must not be a democracy. He
stated that in the same period he came to realise a world-state was inevitable, he
realised that parliamentary democracy as then practised was insufficient. Wells
remained fairly consistent in rejection of a world-state being a parliamentary
democracy and therefore during his work on the United Nations Charter he opposed
any mention of democracy. He feared that the average citizen could never be
educated or aware enough to decide the major issues of the world. Therefore he
favoured the vote be limited to scientists, organisers, engineers, and others of
merit. At the same time he strongly believed citizens should have as much freedom
as they could without consequently restricting the freedom of others. These values
came under increasing criticism from the 1920s and afterwards.
That said, he remained confident of the inevitability of a planned world state well
into the 1930s. 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 despite 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, "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 does not sink so low
as to become the prey, as H. G. Wells images, of some less degenerate animal!"
Legacy
Wells died of liver cancer on 13 August, 1946, at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace,
Regent's Park, London, which now bears his commemorative blue plaque. 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 is now thought of simply
as one of the pioneers of science fiction.
Source : Some of the information on this
page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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H.G.
Wells - Reflector - Biography
