Fun H. G. Wells

Doctor Omega

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
Copy-of-Copy-of-wells-article.jpeg


Herbert George Wells[3][4] (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946), usually referred to as H. G. Wells, was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, writing dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, satire, biography, and autobiography, including even a book on war games. He is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called a "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback.[5][6][a]

During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of airplanes, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the world wide web.[7] His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction”.[8] His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.[9]

Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context.[10] He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist.[11] Novels like Kipps and The History of Mr Polly, which describe lower-middle-class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens,[12]but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. A diabetic, in 1934, Wells co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (known today as Diabetes UK).



 
Last edited:
Gavin

Gavin

Member: Rank 6
VIP
The Seeker said:
How could the aliens know better?
Click to expand...
Indeed, why would they even suspect that as a possibility. The chances of
a human virus affecting an alien species
is so remote that it isn't worth considering. In fact,
that it even happened raises the possibility that humans and martians are in some way related at some point in the evolutionary ladder (and presumably not too distantly - for example we don't share viruses with fish)
 
Doctor Omega

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
s-l500 (2).jpg


The Time Ships is a 1995 science fiction novel by Stephen Baxter. A sequel to The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, it was officially authorised by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original's publication. The Time Ships won critical acclaim. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Philip K. Dick Award in 1996,[1] as well as the British Science Fiction Association Award in 1995.[2] It was also nominated for the Hugo, Clarke, and Locus Awards in 1996.[1]


References to the works of H. G. Wells
  • The name Gottfried Plattner comes from The Plattner Story (included in Wells's collection of short stories entitled The Country of the Blind and Other Stories, written between 1894 and 1909, first published in 1911). There is no original link between this story and The Time Machine, nor does the account related to us by Baxter at the end of The Time Ships echo an event from The Plattner Story. In Wells's original story, Gottfried Plattner is given a full backstory including ancestry and occupation. He is a school teacher made to chemically analyse a "green powder" of uncertain origin by his students, and, upon lighting the powder on fire, is violently launched into a mysterious parallel dimension next to ours where mute "Watchers of the Living", obviously deceased souls or alternate versions of existing people in our world, take keen interest in us.
  • The Morlock Nebogipfel takes his name from Wells's story "The Chronic Argonauts".
  • In the London Dome, the characters are introduced to the Babble Machines, an entertainment/propaganda device, which originally appeared in Wells's When the Sleeper Wakes.
  • Wells himself (as "the Writer") is described as giving a lecture on a Babble Machine, and it is mentioned that he may have "a great deal of influence on official thinking on The Shape of Things to Come".
  • The dome is somewhat similar in concept to the post world war "Bombproofs" mentioned as existing in London after the second world war in The Shape of Things to Comethough this is on a much vaster scale. A similar design is reused by Baxter and Arthur C Clarke in their novel Sunstorm, for the vast dome used to shield London from the Storm of the novels title.
  • When the London Dome is breached, the sound of the alarms is described as "ulla, ulla, ulla", which is the cry of the Martian Tripods in The War of the Worlds.
  • In the Palaeocene Age, the Time Traveller succumbs to a bacterial infection as his body is ill-adapted to the environment, much like the Martians in The War of the Worlds.
  • The people of the Green Moon are referred to as Selenites, as are the inhabitants of the moon in The First Men in the Moon.
  • The novel suggests that the universe of the Time Traveller is not ours, but a slightly different one, coherent with Wells novels (whereas Nebogipfel's original timeline created by the publication of the time traveller's first travel in The Time-Machine, according to what he relates of it to the time traveller, appears to be much more similar to ours). Nuclear energy is produced by a material called carolinum and not uranium. Carolinum allows plattnerite to be produced relatively easily. Carolinum bombs, contrary to A-bombs, continue to detonate for years with an eerie purple glow. The name carolinum and the continuous detonation are references to The World Set Free.
  • In the Palace of Green Porcelain, the Time Traveller views a model of a city resembling London as it is described in When the Sleeper Wakes.
  • As the Time Traveller 're-enters' his body following the journey to the Origin of the Universe, much of the description recalls the ending of Under the Knife.




 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top