H. G. Wells
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Herbert George Wells was something of a Renaissance man in the sense that he demonstrated facility in a number of different areas, exploring through his writings such topics as history, science, sociology, and philosophy. He has become best known for his science fiction works, but these as well reflect his interest in other subjects, notably various sociological concerns of the era as to what progress would mean into the next century and how human beings would fare in the developing scientific world. Wells was particularly concerned over themes that related to the evolution of society and to the ways in which society served the interests of the masses, or failed to serve those interests. An examination of his writing shows that Wells believed in progress and sought to understand and shape the future development of society in a progressive direction. Wells crosses from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries and commented on the changes taking place. His reputation is peculiar in many respects. He wrote on a wide variety of subjects, and he did so with a scholarly erudition that showed he had read and studied widely. He is viewed more as a popularizer of different subjects than as a serious scholar, however, and is also not considered among the first rank in any particular field: . . . most academic specialists will not have him. for students of English literature he has shrunk to the dimensions of a minor novelist, fit for sweeping into the literary dustbin nowad
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he one hand, they can all be read as thrilling adventures--The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds. They can also be read on a deeper level:
Yet all the scientific romances have Swiftian overtones and can be viewed on several levels. . . [based on] all sides of the early Wells--the imaginative storyteller and mythmaker, the futurist skeptic invoking a fin-de-siecle promised land.
Wells is identified through his writings with a particular vision of a utopian World States, and this vision became his way of looking at things. The quality of observation used by Wells is detachment, as indicated by Van Wyck Brooks in talking about Wells' fiction:
As Brooks remarked about Wells' fiction in general, and as we would say particularly about his scientific romances, future histories, and utopias, Wells saw men chemically and anatomically, the world astronomically. Brooks also put it another way: it is the distinction between the intellectual, who views life in terms of ideas, and the artist, who views life in terms of experience.
In his writings, Wells tended to allow the intellectual to dominate, though sometimes the artist would become dominant. The distinction between intell
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Approximate Word count = 1532
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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