HG Wells The Science Fiction Volume 1
Absolutely fascinating, collection of four of HG Wells' novels, great to read and see how someone from over 100 years ago saw the future.
The Time Machine.
As with most of Wells' stories, this is in Victorian fashion a story within a narrative. The story is narrated in first person by a unnamed narrator who relates the adventures related to him by the Time Traveller who builds a device that takes him into the far future to witness the destiny of humanity, who have devolved into two separate species, the white skinned fearsome Morlocks who live underground, are photosensitive and who feed on the feckless beautiful Eloi, who lead a blithe daylight existence on the surface. An imaginative reflection on the future of our species based on the contemporary split of society into the indolent elite and the work burdened proletariat.
The Island of Doctor Moreau
The narrative of Charles Prendick, gentleman and scholar, is prefaced by an introduction stating that Prendick's written account follows but that the said gentleman subsequently lost his memory and did not remember the events given in his written account, and that the narrative has been released after his death by his nephew, again giving it the unreliability of a second hand account whilst also allowing it to be presented as a document of curiosity, something present writers don't often do and which adds a fascinating layer.
Prendick is shipwrecked and picked up by the
Ipecacuanha where he meets Montogomery, a strange man accompanying a menagerie including a puma, several large fierce dogs and rabbits on their journey to an unidentified island. Prendick is thrown off the ship by the captain at the island and is allowed ashore to meet Dr Moreau. The horror of the island is slowly unfolded via Prendick's first person narrative, that Moreau cuts up animals and makes them into human-like beasts which haunt the island and in the end kill Moreau and revert to the beastial natures of themselves. Truly chilling
The War of the Worlds
Just as thrilling as when it was written, but also really interesting to reflect on Wells' narrative of how the coming of the Martians would have affected people at the turn of the century and how things had to change for Steven Spielberg's 2005 film. In Wells' book the news of the coming of the aliens travels slowly and the rise of the tripods comes as a shock to a society unused to horror and human slaughter, in the film the news and panic travels instantaneously via the mass media and the horror is communicated via the destruction of the innocence of Dakota Fanning's slow withdrawl from screaming hysteria into catatonic silence.
The First Men in the Moon
I hadn't heard of this one before and I think it's overlooked, very brilliant thinking and again a reflection on the nature of society. Mr Bedford, a gentleman with debts who has fled to the south coast to escape bankruptcy and to write a play which he hopes will restore his finances, meets Mr Cavor, a brilliant scientist who is working on a substance that will block all forces, including gravity. The difference between the purity of Cavor's scientific mind and Bedford's avoricious nature are revealed by Bedford's quick realisation of the potential of a substance that can block even gravity but after Cavor succeeds in his creation and almost destroys the entire atmosphere of planet earth he instead creates a spaceship which via anti gravity takes Cavor and Bedford to the moon. Here Wells' imagination creates a fascinating world where the answer to the Moon's low night temperatures and airlessness is a society that lives beneath the surface in caverns stretching down to a core lunar sea. These Selentites shepherd the wonderful Mooncalfs on the surface during the lunar day and return at night, and each Selenites is individually physically and mentally tuned to their individual purpose, books replaced by Selenites with enormous brains that are repositories for knowledge, workers with great arms designed for their individual job, presided over by the Grand Lunar. Wells is pretty damning about human nature, Bedford's bloody humanity comes to the surface and he kills a number of the Selenites and escapes back to earth, but Cavor is recaptured and manages to communicate his experiences of Selenite society to earth by radio before making his own fatal mistake.
