Three Prophetic Science Fiction Novels

by H.G. Wells, E.F. Bleiler (editor)

Stages of a consistently planned future for mankind. When the Sleeper Wakes and A Story of the Days to Come anticipate Brave New World and 1984 , in the 21st century; The Time Machine (full version) shows farther future and the end of mankind. All show Wells’s greatest gifts as storyteller and novelist. Edited by E. F. Bleiler.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

335 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.

He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.

More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...

http://www.online-literature.com/well...

http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

Reviews

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a curious collection. You can find A Story of the Days to Come in several other places (check out the stellar Complete Short Stories of H.G. Wells), and the common version of The Time Machine just about anywhere. There are two noteworthy things about this volume:

1) This version of The Time Machine is the less common, unabridged version.

2) When the Sleeper Wakes is generally hard to find in print.

The “further vision” in this version of The Time Machine is, to my mind, the best part of the book. It’s a few pages at the most, but it takes the implications of the theme one step further and, as such, makes the book more satisfying and fun to read.

When the Sleeper Wakes is an interesting case. Overall, the story feels very-good-but-not-quite-great...

The premise is excellent. Throughout, the book is filled with typical Wellsian political ideology and prophecies (which are usually fun to read), and makes good-but-not-awesome use of a dystopian setting. After a great set-up, the narrative falls to the side while political details are explored and ruminated over, and characters end up on the lam (an overly-familiar device to Wells readers).

This type of pacing and story construction occurs to some extent in other Wells sci-fi (War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, several others), but in this case the story suffers too much from it, and the book just drags. If you’re a fan of Wells’ sci-fi, though, you’ll most likely want to read WTSW if you get the chance, so combining this (again, hard-to-find) book with the unabridged Time Machine makes the collection worth seeking out.

Also, it’s kind of amusing that the publishers slightly modify the title of A Story of the Days to Come on the book cover, seemingly for the sole purpose of squeezing that title into one line of text.

[Gregg Wingo · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I am not in the habit of rereading novels from my childhood, I recently chose to start some novels by my first science fiction authors, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. I had not intended to read "The Time Machine" again but since it was packaged with "When the Sleeper Awakens" and "A Story of Days to Come", and included the complete novel which I may or may not have read in seventh grade I said "Why Not". I am glad I did because while I could remember the tale of the Morlocks and the Eloi, I had not made the connection of what a critical piece it was for literary science fiction. I now more fully understand the brilliance of Harlan Ellison's New Wave retelling of the story in "A Boy and His Dog" and the centrality of it to Margaret Atwood's "Maddaddam Trilogy". Both stories and so many, many other SF stories are grounded and reinterpret in this tale from the beginnings of the genre and its original in Modernist literature.

Wells' can also achieve a poignancy in his writing that I overlooked in my youth:

"But to me the future is still black and blank - is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers - shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man."

I have reviewed "When the Sleeper Awakens" elsewhere and highly recommend it for its exuberance and continuing insightfulness. "A Story of Days to Come" is set in the same milieu but pales to the original work and fails to meet the wit found within Austen's characterization of Marianne Dashwood's love life in "Sense and Sensibility" which Wells' attempts to update from a Victorian perspective.

Overall as they say "Two out of three ain't bad"...

[DavidO · Rating 3 out of 5]

The time machine is a very good story.

When the Sleeper Wakes is a bit ridiculous with the notion that a dude would get so much interest from his estate in 200 years that he owned the world.

The Shape of things to come is an alternate history, which is fine, but at this point it is very very dated.

I guess the main problem with these books is the fact that they are so dated. The social issues he is talking about don't quite resolve the way he expects, and so by our current year the story feels a bit ridiculous. However I'm sure at the time they were very important stories in the sense of how much they predict (or fail to predict).

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd read The Time Machine and seen the first movie version as a kid, but the other two novels were new to me. This version of the first book is a longer one than that usually published.