admirers and critics could not make up their minds whether to label his work a distillation of the world-view of the late nineteenth century, a mirror of contemporary thought, or a body of prophetic wisdom well ahead of its time. It was well perhaps less than any of these, but an extraordinary number of ideas did crowd through Wells' mind and, stamped into the familiar shapes of his thought, they did tumble out into his books.
The starting point for Wells' literary career was a series of scientific romances bringing to light through myth and symbol Wells' fear that humankind could be doomed by a hostile universe. In his middle period, Wells discarded his view of the cosmos and turned instead to the individual, in works such as Kipps, Mr. Polly, and Tono-bungay, works which exhibit the author wrestling unsuccessfully with the conflicts of his own persona:
Under a heavy film of doctrinaire musings ar revealed such Wellsian alter egos as the p
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