H.G. Wells

Herbert George Wells (Bromley, September 21, 1866-London, August 13, 1946), better known as H. G. Wells, was a British writer and novelist. Wells was a prolific author writing in a variety of genres including science fiction, dozens of novels, short stories, works of social criticism, satire, biographies, and autobiographies. He is remembered for his science fiction novels and is frequently cited as the "father of science fiction" along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback.

In his lifetime, however, he was recognized as a far-sighted, even prescient social critic who devoted his literary talents to developing a progressive vision on a global scale. In his role as a futurist, he wrote various utopian works and foresaw the advent of airplanes, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something similar to the Internet. In science fiction he imagined time travel, alien invasions, invisibility and biological engineering. Among his most outstanding works are The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898) and The War in the Air (1907). He was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Wells originally studied biology, and his ideas on ethical issues developed in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also always an outspoken socialist who often (though not always, as at the start of World War I) sympathized with with pacifist positions. His later works were increasingly political and didactic, leaving aside science fiction, while sometimes indicating in official documents that his profession was journalism. Novels such as Kipps or The Story of Mr. Polly, depicting lower-middle-class life, led to suggestions that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, although Wells portrayed many social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of the whole of English society. Sick with diabetes, Wells co-founded the charitable The Diabetic Association (now known as Diabetes UK) in 1934. Due to his writings related to science, in 1970 it was decided in his honor to name a lunar astrobleme located on the far side of the Moon H. G. Wells.

Biography

He was born at Atlas House, 47 High Street, Bromley, Kent, on 21 September 1866, the third son of Joseph Wells and his wife Sarah Neal. The family belonged to the impoverished lower-middle class of the time. They had a less-than-prosperous shop bought through an inheritance, selling sporting goods and fine china.

In 1874, the young Herbert George Wells experienced an event that would have significant repercussions for his future: he suffered an accident that left him bedridden with a broken leg. To kill time, he started reading books from the local library that his father brought him. He became fond of reading and began to want to write. That same year he entered a commercial academy called Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy, in which he continued until 1880.

In 1877 his father suffered an accident that prevented him from earning a living as he had done until then. This led to Herbert and his brothers beginning to be employed in various trades. This is how, between 1881 and 1883, he became an apprentice at a textile shop called Southsea Drapery Emporium: Hyde's, an experience that is reflected in his novels The Wheels of Chance (1896) and Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul (1905) whose protagonist is a textile apprentice. In 1883 he enrolled at Midhurst Grammar School in West Sussex as a pupil and tutor, where he continued his avidity for reading.

In 1884 he was awarded a scholarship to study biology at the Royal College of Science in London, where he was taught by Thomas Henry Huxley. He studied there until 1887. Wells himself, recalling that time, speaks of having suffered constant hunger. During this period he also joined a school debating club called the Debating Society, where he expressed an interest in transforming the society. He was one of the founders of The Science School Journal , a magazine in which he published his postulates in literature and social issues. It was there that his novel The Time Machine saw the light of day for the first time, but with the original title: The Chronic Argonauts (The Chronic Argonauts).

H. G. Wells while studying in London (circa 1890).

Failing his geology exam in 1887, he lost his scholarship. Thus it was not until 1890 that he received a bachelor's degree in zoology from the External Program of the University of London. Without the scholarship, that is, without income, he went to live with a relative named Mary, cousin of her father, where he became interested in her daughter, Isabel. Between 1889 and 1890 he was a professor at the Henley House School He was one of the founders of the Royal College of Science Association , being its first president in 1909.

His ten-year relationship with Rebecca West produced a son, Anthony West, born in 1914. Contracting tuberculosis, he gave up everything to write; he came to complete more than a hundred works. Considered one of the forerunners of science fiction, his early works ranged from scientific fantasy to prophetic descriptions of the triumphs of technology and commentary on the horrors of century wars XX: The Time Machine (The Time Machine, 1895), his first novel, an immediate success, in which science, adventure and politics were intertwined; The invisible man (The Invisible Man, 1897); The War of the Worlds (The War of the Worlds, 1898) and The First Men in the Moon (The First Men in the Moon, 1901). Many of them gave rise to several films.

At the same time, he was interested in the sociological reality of the moment, especially that of the middle classes, defending the rights of the marginalized and fighting against the prevailing hypocrisy, which he drew with love, compassion and a sense of humor in novels such as Love and Mr. Lewisham (1900), Kipps, the Story of a Simple Soul (1905) and Mr. Polly (1910), a novel with an extensive portrait of the characters in which, as in Kipps , he describes with fine irony the failure of the social aspirations of his protagonists.

The vast majority of his other books can be classified as social novels. Among them are Ana Verónica (Ann Veronica 1909), in which she defended women's rights, Tono Bungay (1909), a attack irresponsible capitalism, and Mr. Britling Goes Deep (1916), describing the reaction of the average Englishman to the war. After World War I (1914-1918), he wrote a three-part history of humanity, Outline of History (1920), in which Julian Huxley collaborated.

H. G. Wells in 1943.

Throughout his life Wells was concerned, and made it widely known, about the survival of contemporary society. For a brief period, he was a member of the Fabian Society. Although he firmly believed in the utopia according to which the vast and terrifying material forces placed at the disposal of the human being could be controlled by reason and used for progress and equality among the inhabitants of the world, little by little he became more pessimistic and ceased to exist. their membership in that society. Thus he dedicated his work 42 to 44 (1944) to the criticism of many of the world leaders of the day. On the other hand, in The fate of homo sapiens (1945) he expressed doubts about the possibility of survival of the human race. He also wrote Experiment in Autobiography (1934) before his death on August 13, 1946 in London.

H. G. Wells House in London

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Convictions

H. G. Wells was a convinced leftist all his life. In fact, his first novel, The Time Machine (1895), dealt primarily with the class struggle. The beautiful Eloi were descendants of the old capitalists, and the Morlocks of the proletarians, buried along with machines and industry and who, in the novel, end up dominating their former oppressors. Convinced of the need for a more just social system, he would join the Fabian Society, whose objective was to establish socialism peacefully, although differences with certain members (for example Bernard Shaw) ended up distancing him from the group.

Wells also criticized the hypocrisy and rigidity of the Victorian era, as well as British imperialism, and in her novel Ana Verónica (1909) she anticipated what would be the women's liberation movements. Wells was convinced that the human species could be improved through science and education. However, he distanced himself from many of his contemporaries by being one of the first thinkers to warn against blindly trusting machines. He always postulated that it was man who should dominate machines, and not the other way around.

During the last period of his life, Wells assumed the task of defending in writings and conferences everything he considered positive for progress, as well as criticizing the great wars that devastated Europe.

Works

Cover of the first edition The War of the Worlds (1898).

All the works of H. G. Wells are influenced by his deep convictions. In The Time Machine (1895) he addressed the issue of the class struggle; in The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and The Invisible Man (1897), the ethical limits of science and the obligation of the scientist to act ethically beyond of the power that his discoveries grant him; in The War of the Worlds (1898), the critique of the customs of the Victorian era and British imperialist practices. This is in regard to his first novels, which have made him one of the greatest science fiction writers. From 1900 he began to write novels that described the life of humble people, among which is Ana Verónica (1909), in which he addresses the issue of women's liberation.

In addition to novels, he wrote encyclopedic essays such as The profile of history (1919) or The open conspiracy (1922) and, although he never gave up on his attempt to create a more just and supportive world, his last writings The fate of homo sapiens (1939) and The mind on the edge of the abyss (1945) are marked by a pessimism fruit of contemplating a humanity that, out of ambition and hatred, destroys itself.

Wells's literary style, however, falls short of the subjects he deals with, and it is to the latter that he owes his fame as a writer. According to him, what counts is what is written, not how it is written. As he himself said:

I do honestly what I can to avoid repetitions in my prose and things like that, but, taking a high passage, I do not see the interest of writing for the beauty of language without more.

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He also had a vocation as a historian, he published two works: Brief history of the world and Scheme of universal history, both begin with the creation of the Earth, the first extending until the formation of the League of Nations and the second until the fall of Nazi Germany.

In 1997 he was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in recognition of his pioneering work in the genre. Likewise, his influence has been recognized in many other events, such as the fact that he appears reviewed in the 1997 Locus survey as one of the best science fiction authors of all time, and in which his works The The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds also obtained this distinction in the survey carried out in 1998, a whole century after the publication of the second one. Wells was also, without this implying any contradiction with his pacifist convictions, a pioneer in the development of regulations for war games, with his works Floor Games (1911) and Little Wars (1913).

Awards

• 1997: Included in the Hall of the Fame of Science Fiction
• 1998: Locus Survey, 17th best novel before 1990 by Time machine
• 1998: Locus Survey, 28th best novel before 1990 by The War of the Worlds
• 1999: Locus Survey, 2.a best short novel of all time by Time machine

In popular culture

• H.G. Wells appeared as a character on the science fiction and superheroes "Lois and Clark, Superman's new adventures." In that series, Wells was a time traveler who was chasing Tempus, a timeless outlaw.
• In chapter 11 "The Eight Magnificents" of the DC series, Legends of Tomorrow appears H.G. Wells as a child, being saved from a disease still incurable in the old west by one of the legends, Professor Stein.
• It appears as one of the characters that Goggins visits in the work Gog by the Italian author Giovanni Papini.
• H.G Wells appeared in the light novel "55 minutes" of the work Bungou Stray Dogs, by Kafka Asagiri.