by H. G. Wells
27 (p. 98) how much they understood of us: The narrator wonders if the Martians imagine humans as anything but mindless insects. Wells uses this opportunity to introduce the issue of the Martians’ food. Since blood is their food, it seems unlikely they will exterminate humanity.
28 (p. 98) I so far forgot my personal safety: The narrator is now possessed by curiosity, so much so that he risks his life to witness the firing of the black-smoke projectiles by the Martians. This same curiosity will cause him to follow the invasion to its final moments. But the fact that he is a witness does not make him a leader. He may have insights into what must be done, but the future task of galvanizing humanity into a force like that of the Martians will belong to others. In this sense, he is like Wells, who visualizes the need to unify humanity politically and economically but is not himself the leader who can bring this about.
29 (p. 115) a bearded, eagle-faced man... lay limp and dead: Wells’s anti-Semitism, typical of the times, makes him include this grotesque picture of a man so greedy he dies trying to save his money rather than leaving it behind to save his life.
30 (p. 121) Committee of Public Supply, seized the pony as provisions: The pony is to be eaten. Private property ceases to exist in the face of universal crisis, and the needs of the many—food, in this case—supersede those of the individual.
Book Two
1 (p. 131) In the first book I have wandered: The narrator picks up the thread of his own story, taking us back to his situation in book one, chapter 15.
2 (p. 141) imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon: A standard device in fantastic fiction is the notion “you had to be there”—that is, language is inadequate to describe this object. Of course, the object in question never existed, but the rhetorical device enhances the realism of the novel.
3 (p. 142) fresh, living blood of other creatures: Like vampires, the Martians live on blood. The same year Wells’s novel was serialized (1897), Bram Stoker (1847-1912) published Dracula, in which London is attacked by “foreign” creatures. But where Stoker continues the tradition of the Gothic novel, with its emphasis on horror for the sake of horror—Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) had already brought vampires (female) into Victorian England in Carmilla (1872)—Wells uses vampirism as a means to speculate about human evolution. The Martians have been streamlined by nature and by their own self-modification, and are, in short, Wells’s ideal for humanity. The reference on p. 144 to an article published in 1893 in the Pall Mall Budget is self-referential: In November 1893 Wells published “The Man of the Year Million,” a semi-satirical piece that postulates a future humanity remarkably similar to the Martians. The comic magazine Punch subsequently published a poem mocking Wells’s article.
4 (p. 145) the vegetable kingdom in Mars ... is of a vivid blood-red tint: Here Wells plays with our accepted notions of color coding. Green, associated on Earth with hope and with nature, is the color of the smoke produced by the Martian machinery; red, the color we link with passion and blood, is the color of Martian vegetation. Only the ominous Black Smoke is a danger signal on both planets.
5 (p. 149) as lacking in restraint as a silly woman: The adjective is important here because it saves the narrator from slipping into sexism and because it reminds us that his brother has discovered in Miss Elphinstone a new kind of woman, one unafraid to take action.
6 (p. 156) We have sinned, we have fallen short: The curate drifts into madness, confessing his (and perhaps the entire clergy’s) abandonment of the poor. Again, he sees the Martian invasion as a divine judgment passed on humanity, and for that reason he combines self-criticism with references to the Bible’s Book of Revelation and the end of the world. But Wells, the God of the text, the author of this calamity, sees the Martian invasion as an opportunity for humanity to realize its collective identity and to unite in a world political, economic, and social organization. In short, he wants humans to be Martians, even if he never explains what the nature of Martian society might be.
7 (p. 173) It isn’t quite according to what a man wants for his species, but it’s about what the facts point to: The artilleryman enunciates one of Wells’s favorite principles of social evolution—namely, that utopias are mere words, while reality is composed of objective facts. Either humans will adapt to the new reality, or they will become cattle for the Martians. A manic survivalist, the artilleryman goes on to elaborate a plan (pp. 176-177) for an underground society whose entire purpose is, as he says, to “save the race.” However, like the narrator, the artilleryman is not a leader. He is flawed and will eventually succumb to his own vices, especially alcohol. Even so, Wells intends for the artilleryman’s ideas to raise the consciousness of the reader.
8 (p. 176) I, a professed and recognized writer... and he, a common soldier: Wells puts his pragmatic social Darwinism into practice here. The artilleryman formulates a program as a reaction to reality; the philosophic narrator thinks in terms of tradition.
9 (p. 201) this invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men: Wells returns to his social message, especially “the conception of the commonweal of mankind.” A sacrifice was made in terms of life and property, but a greater good may come of it: a world government.
10 (p. 201) slow cooling of the sun makes this earth uninhabitable: Wells expresses here the entropy theory—that the sun, like any dynamic system, must inevitably lose energy and die. This idea is also present in The Time Machine (1895); see note 4 for book one.
About the Author
Social philosopher, utopian, novelist, and “father” of science fiction and science fantasy, Herbert George Wells was born on September 21, 1866, in Bromley, Kent. His father was a poor businessman, and young Bertie’s mother had to work as a lady’s maid. Living “below stairs” with his mother at an estate called Uppark, Bertie would sneak into the grand library to read Plato, Swift, and Voltaire, authors who deeply influenced his later works. He showed literary and artistic talent in his early stories and paintings, but the family had limited means, and when he was fourteen years old, Bertie was sent as an apprentice to a dealer in cloth and dry goods, work he disliked.
He held jobs in other trades before winning a scholarship to study biology at the Normal School of Science in London. The eminent biologist T. H. Huxley, a friend and proponent of Darwin, was his teacher; about him Wells later said, “I believed then he was the greatest man I was ever likely to meet.” Under Huxley’s influence, Wells learned the science that would inspire many of his creative works and cultivated the skepticism about the likelihood of human progress that would infuse his writing.
Teaching, textbook writing, and journalism occupied Wells until 1895, when he made his literary debut with the now-legendary novel The Time Machine, which was followed before the end of the century by The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds, books that established him as a major writer. Fiercely critical of Victorian mores, he published voluminously, in fiction and nonfiction, on the subjects of politics and social philosophy. Biological evolution does not ensure moral progress, as Wells would repeat throughout his life, during which he witnessed two world wars and the debasement of science for military and political ends.
In addition to social commentary presented in the guise of science fiction, Wells authored comic novels like Love and Mr. Lewisham, Kipps, and The History of Mister Polly that are Dickensian in their scope and feeling, and a feminist novel, Ann Veronica. He wrote specific social commentary in The New Machiavelli, an attack on the socialist Fabian Society, which he had joined and then rejected, and literary parody (of Henry James) in Boon. He wrote textbooks of biology, and his massive The Outline of History was a major international best-seller.
By the time Wells reached middle age, he was admired around the world, and he used his fame to promote his utopian vision, warning that the future promised “Knowledge or extinction.” He met with such preeminent political figures as Lenin, Roosevelt, and Stalin and continued to publ
ish, travel, and educate during his final years. Herbert George Wells died in London on August 13, 1946.
The World of H. G. Wells
1866 Herbert George Wells, known as a child as Bertie, is born on September 21 in Bromley, Kent. His pious parents, who had once been domestic servants, are often on the brink of financial ruin. Bertie’s father, now owner of a china shop, is an excellent cricket player but a bad businessman.
1871 Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There is published. The first books of George Eliot’s Middlemarch are published. A British Act of Parliament legalizes labor unions. The Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences opens in London.
1879 Wells’s mother takes work as a housekeeper at a nearby estate called Uppark, where she had served as a lady’s maid before her marriage. Bertie lives with her at Uppark, where he reads copiously from the library.
1880 Bertie’s mother has him become an apprentice to a draper (a dealer in cloth and dry goods). He finds the work unsatisfying yet stays with this position and another for a pharmacist for the next two years.
1882 Charles Darwin dies.
1883 Bertie dislikes retail work and takes a position as an assistant teacher at Midhurst Grammar School. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is published.
1884 Wells wins a scholarship and enters the Normal School of Science in the South Kensington section of London. His mentor, the eminent biologist and proponent of Darwinism T. H. Huxley, deeply influences him, introducing him to evolutionary science and skepticism about human progress.
1887 The first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is published.
1888 Wells publishes sketches called The Chronic Argonauts that later will become The Time Machine. He graduates from London University.
1891 He marries his cousin, Isabel Mary Wells. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d‘Urbervilles are published.
1893 Wells’s marriage is unhappy. He falls in love with a beautiful young student named Amy Catherine (“Jane”) Robbins. His first published book, Textbook of Biology, appears. He becomes a full-time writer, known for independence of mind and works that challenge conventional thinking.
1895 After Isabel and H. G. divorce, he marries Jane Robbins. His tireless supporter, she types all of his manuscripts and correspondence. Wells publishes The Time Machine, which parodies the English class system and provides a distressing view of the future of human society. The Stolen Bacillus, a collection of short stories, and The Wonderful Visit, a science- fiction novel, also appear. In his lifetime, Wells will publish more than eighty books.
1896 Wells publishes The Island of Dr. Moreau, in which a mad scientist turns animals into semihuman creatures, and The Wheels of Chance, about the bicycling craze.
1897 The Faust-like tale The Invisible Man appears. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is published.
1898 Wells publishes The War of the Worlds, about an invasion of Martians.
1900 In the first years of the century, Wells and Jane host numerous luminaries in their home and actively engage in various political and intellectual debates. Wells publishes a comic novel of lower-middle-class life, Love and Mr. Lewisham, about a struggling teacher.
1901 A son, George Philip Wells, is born to Jane and H. G. The First Men in the Moon, which predicts human travels into outer space, and Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought, in which Wells advances his ideas about social progress, are published. Queen Victoria dies.
1903 A second son, Francis Richard, is born. Mankind in the Making , another book promoting social progress, is published. Wells joins the socialist Fabian Society, but soon draws fire from George Bernard Shaw and others for his deviations from the Fabian line. Throughout his life, Wells takes every opportunity to share and implement his dream of a utopian society.
1905 Wells publishes the somewhat autobiographical comic novel Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul, in which a man receives an unexpected inheritance. A Modern Utopia, again centered around Wells’ ideas about social progress, also appears. George Bernard Shaw’s play Major Barbara is published.
1908 Wells resigns from the Fabian Society. He publishes The War in the Air, which foretells aerial combat.
1909 He publishes Tono-Bungay, a panoramic and critical picture of English society, and Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story, a feminist novel.
1910 Wells publishes an ode to the past in the comic novel The History of Mr. Polly, in which a shopkeeper changes his life. E. M. Forster’s Howards End appears.
1911 In The New Machiavelli, Wells excoriates the Fabian Society and provides portraits of its notable members. His collection The Country of the Blind and Other Stories appears.
1914 World War I begins. Wells and the writer Rebecca West, with whom he has a long affair, have a son, Anthony. Wells travels to Russia for the first time. He publishes The World Set Free, which predicts the use of the atomic bomb in warfare.
1915 Boon, a novel that satirizes Henry James’s style, is published under the pen name Reginald Bliss; it provokes an acerbic exchange between the two authors. D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow is published.
1916 Wells travels to the war fronts of Italy, Germany, and France. He publishes Mr. Britling Sees It Through, a realistic portrayal of the English during the war. James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published.
1918 Wells creates anti-German information for the Ministry of Propaganda.
1919 He coauthors, with Viscount Edward Grey, The Idea of a League of Nations.
1920 In an effort to rally’supporters to his progressive political agenda, Wells travels again to Russia to meet with Lenin. Russia in the Shadows and his immensely popular The Outline of History are published. Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence is published.
1922 A Short History of the World appears. T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland is published. James Joyce’s Ulysses is published in Paris.
1927 Jane Wells dies. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is published.
1928 Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall appears.
1929 Wells publishes The Common Sense of World Peace.
1929-1930 In collaboration with his son, G. P. Wells, and biologist Julian ‘Huxley (grandson of T. H. Huxley), he publishes a work on biology called The Science of Life.
1930 W. H. Auden’s Poems is published.
1933 Wells publishes the novel The Shape of Things to Come, the story of a world war that lasts three decades in which cities are destroyed by aerial bombs.
1934 Wells travels to Moscow to speak with Stalin and returns despondent over the encounter. The writer’s good-natured Experiment in Autobiography, a portrait of himself and his contemporaries, appears. He visits the United States and confers with Roosevelt.
1935 Based on the novel The Shape of Things to Come, Wells writes the screenplay for Things to Come, a film produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzies.
1936 Things to Come is released in the United States.
1938 Orson Welles’s radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds sends millions of Americans into panic.
1939 World War II begins.
1945 World War II ends. Wells publishes Mind at the End of Its Tether, a vision of mankind rejected and destroyed by nature. George Orwell’s Animal Farm appears.
1946 Herbert George Wells dies in London on August 13.
Inspired by The Time Machine
In the wake of H. G. Wells’s classic novel, traveling through the fourth dimension has become a favorite activity in science-fiction films. Time travel has been evoked to push the story forward or backward in projects as diverse as the Back to the Future trilogy, the Star Trek series, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Terry Gilliam’s films Time Bandits and Twelve Monkeys, two generations of Planet of the Apes, and the Terminator movies.
In 1960 H. G. Wells’s classic novel became a classic film. The Time Machine was produc
ed and directed by George Pal, legendary for his sci-fi films, especially the 1953 adaptation of Wells’s War of the Worlds, which Pal produced and which was nominated for three Academy Awards. Rod Taylor stars in The Time Machine as the young British inventor H. George Wells, whose skeptical friends laugh at the thought of him launching himself into unknown worlds of the future. With an enormous clock as a backdrop, he rides through time, bypassing the two World Wars and a third nuclear and apocalyptic one in the then-future 1967. Wells used his novel to consider the social gap between the idle elite and the impoverished laboring class; Pal explores the Cold War fears of his day. Arriving in the year 802,701, the young scientist first encounters the Eloi race, including the beautiful Weena (Yvette Mimieux), who tells him of the subterranean Morlocks. The adventure culminates in an all-out battle between the effete Eloi and the monstrous Morlocks. The Time Machine earned an Oscar for Best Special Effects, which remain fairly effective even by today’s standards.
In 2002, more than a century after Wells wrote about time travel, his great-grandson Simon Wells directed another film adaptation of The Time Machine. Guy Pearce stars as Alexander Hartdegen, a Columbia professor whose fiancee Emma (Sienna Guillory) is murdered in Central Park. Driven by the hope of traveling to the past to save her, Hartdegen bases his time-defying device upon Einstein’s theories. Unable to rescue Emma, he travels eight thousand centuries into the future to explore the fate of humanity; the great machine (replete with gold fixtures, gauges, levers, mirrors, and glass) hurtles through a landscape that itself whirls and shifts until it finally becomes positively primeval. In this version, the moon has fallen into the earth, which results in Homo sapiens being divided into two races, the Eloi aboveground and the Morlocks in the dark recesses underneath. The future is modeled after Pal’s vision, but the pale-skinned, blonde-haired Eloi of the 1960 film are here replaced by a sturdy, brown-skinned race. The evil leader of the Eloi-eating Morlocks, a species that can leap great distances, is played by a menacing Jeremy Irons. Again, the young scientist falls in love with a beautiful Eloi woman, Mara, played by Samantha Mumba. The humanist Hartdegen teaches Mara to fight back, and she likewise teaches him not to dwell in the past. Stunningly photographed, the film is an apt rejuvenation of and homage to Wells’s classic.