H.G. Wells; we all know
him, right? Late Victorian British writer of Science Fiction? Wrote The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds? Good, now we’re
on the same page. Considering how these three books of his aren’t especially
long, I’ve tackled them all for your continuing benefit; and so, without
further preamble, let’s see if this guy is any good.
The Time Machine (1895)
Time travel is one of those staple science fiction
concepts. ‘What if we could travel through time?’ they excitedly ask, and sure
enough the first of H.G. Wells’ pieces on our list is about just that. The
story is written from the point of view of some guy, part of a small scientific
fraternity who seemingly have, amongst their number, an inventor of a time
machine. When this Time Traveller (he’s not named in the story), shows up
looking a little worse for wear, he recounts his tale of his first trip through
time, to the far reaches of the future.
First thing to note, this Time Traveller is not a very good
scientist. Carefully controlled experiments and peer review? Nonsense; I’ll
just sit in my new toy and whizz off without telling a soul, and go as far into
the future as I can manage. The year 802,701 AD, to be precise – and yes, that
number indicates that he travels nearly eight hundred thousand years into the
future, a period of time which dwarfs the current age of human civilisation. He
arrives in a world populated by rather pathetic, benign descendents of the
human race, who seem to live in a sort of care-free daze while they bumble
around like hippies. Seems like a rather nice future, to be honest; but that’s
before he discovers that these aren’t the only descendents of humanity. It
turns out that there’s another new group, living underground in total darkness,
the carnivorous Morlocks who only venture to the surface at night, when the moon
is sufficiently New to cloud the world in pitch-darkness. The Time Traveller
quickly realises that the Morlocks have stolen his machine, for some reason,
and with nothing more than a box of matches and the clothes he’s standing in,
he’s got to find a way to get it back if he’s ever to see his own time again.
This could all have been avoided if he’d had some kind of back-up plan, or a
team of helpers to look after his machine while he made reconnaissance.
So yes, it’s a rather short, faintly dull little novel, but
it has one or two interesting ideas at its core. The writing style is formal
Victorian, but not too heavy, and it feels almost like a lightweight H.P.
Lovecraft, at least once the Morlocks get involved. There are one or two
moments of tension to break the banality, and the last few chapters have some
nice touches (giant crabs and other weird stuff) to try and eke out a bit more
from the concept, before it anticlimaxes. It’s a nice little read if you’re
into that sort of thing.
The Invisible Man (1897)
A man succeeds in turning himself
invisible. It’s a shame that he didn’t bother to find a way to turn himself
visible again before he committed to it. It’s also a shame he actually turned
out to be a deranged sociopath. It’s actually quite a good story, would you
believe it?
So in this proto-superhero classic, a mysterious man
arrives at an inn completely swaddled in clothing, fully scarfed, hatted and
muffled so that the landlady and locals have no idea of what he looks like,
before establishing himself in a room and demanding near-total isolation. Who
could this man be, and why won’t he show one tiny scrap of flesh beyond his
blatantly fake-looking nose? Well unfortunately, any suspense or mystery in the
early part of the book is ruined by the title giving everything away! The
reason this man goes everywhere dressed from head to foot is so that he doesn’t
reveal that he’s completely invisible. If he did not disguise his features, he’d
just look like a suit of clothes wandering around of their own accord, and
hence the pitchfork-wielding mobs would probably want to kill him. And quite
right too, considering he’s not actually a very nice man at all.
The story takes place all in the third-person, from the
point of view of the ordinary locals who watch in suspicion as this mysterious
stranger moves throughout their midst, wondering what his secret project might
be. By the time of the big reveal, when the Invisible Man shows himself (a pun
that has no doubt been used for the past 117 years), the story has actually
turned out to be quite good; the premise is unusual and it succeeds in drawing
you in, meaning that it’s worth getting to the end just to see what happens.
The various characters are well-made and serve their functions to the story,
while the Invisible Man himself is actually a decent character in his own right.
Rude, suspicious, and genuinely quite nasty – he got himself into this mess,
but by no means does he warrant sympathy. This superpower he’s given himself
has more downsides than advantages, and only works if he’s totally naked (an
odd superpower and not one suited to a British climate). By the time of climax
the odds are very much against him, then it’s just the tricky matter of finally
nailing him for good.
All in all, a disposable but entertaining read. Certainly
my favourite of the three H.G. Wells stories reviewed here today.
The War of the Worlds
(1898)
One of the very first pieces of ‘alien invasion’ literature
ever written, it’s basically a Victorian Independence
Day. The planet Mars harbours a thoroughly inhuman species who covet the
Earth for themselves, and in the 19th century the best way for them
to invade is to load themselves up in rockets and literally fire themselves at
our world. The story is told from the perspective of a middle-class guy whose
hometown of Woking is the first crash-site for this interplanetary invasion,
and he coldly recounts the moments of first contact, the emergence of the
near-unstoppable Martian war machines – the tripods – and their assault right
through the heart of middle England and into London.
This story is fascinating as a cultural relic, a view of
how the human race may have coped in a war against a technologically superior
foe during the pre-First World War era. Whereas the Martians have gigantic
armoured all-terrain war machines armed with incredibly destructive ‘heat-ray’
weapons, and a gaseous superweapon, all the humans have to combat them at this
stage are artillery, dynamite, and 19th century battleships. Any
attempt at resistance to the Martian onslaught is negligible, and within a very
short space of time London, at that time the capital of one of the most
powerful nations in the world, is completely overrun. The occasional
dual-narrative account from the protagonist’s brother (neither character is
named, annoyingly) allows the narrator to recount the effects of the evacuation
of London, and the horror of the crowds of fleeing people trying to find safety
elsewhere in the country, or else escape overseas completely. In many ways this
piece of science fiction is effective as a ‘what if?’ story, asking the
question of what would happen should secure, powerful Great Britain be suddenly
brought low. The same as anywhere else; society would collapse, and the
citizens of one of the wealthiest nations in the world would become refugees.
Of the writing itself, I have less good things to say. The
characters are not much more than cardboard cut-outs; the protagonist, his
wife, his brother, an artilleryman and a curate making up a rather dull, unnamed
cast whose only function is to add some token humanity to a story about the
collapse of civilisation. The prose felt quite basic and unengaging, and the
story itself was not particularly interesting despite the whole ‘Victorians Vs.
Martians’ aspect. It was short, though, and not dense in any way, but that also
means that there’s no real flourish of writing, nothing to really hook you in
like characters, or story, just a hard grey account. It’s fascinating as a
cultural artefact, and if you’re interested in the history of sci-fi or ever
wondered what would have happened if Independence
Day had taken place in Woking in the 1890s, then you might find a little
gem here, but aside from those reasons there’s little point in digging this
book off the shelf.
The Bibliosible Man
Wells, H.G. Five Great Novels. An Omnibus. Gollancz: St. Ives. (2004 [All stories
published 1895-1901])
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