H G Wells

Texts

The Time Machine (1895)

Of the many ages that the nameless Time Traveller visits, the principal one is the age of the Eloi and the Morlocks, AD 802,701. The Eloi (descendants of the Victorian leisured classes) are sophisticated but decadent and unable to fend for themselves. The cannibalistic Morlocks (descendants of the Victorian working classes) labour hard in subterranean factories, feeding off the surface-dwellers’ flesh. Wells foresees the future for humanity as one of decline, gross savagery and extinction – the inevitable result of continued class exploitation. Wells grimly warns society that the Time Traveller:

…thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw the growing pile of civilisation only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.

The Time Machine (electronic text): www.literature.org/authors/wells-herbert-george/the-time-machine/

The Invisible Man (1897)

Griffin, a scientist, irresponsibly exploits science for his own advantage but soon discovers that such unscrupulous behaviour carries attendant and serious consequences.

The Invisible Man (electronic text): www.literature.org/authors/wells-herbert-george/the-invisible-man/

The War of the Worlds (1898)

The nameless Narrator witnesses a nightmarish invasion of southern England by Martians. Humanity has no more means of repelling these technologically superior invaders than the native inhabitants of Africa (or even Tasmania) had of withstanding European settlers. Given Wells’ supremely confident, imperialist invaders, the Narrator observes:

Before we judge them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only on animals, such as the vanished bison and dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The War of the Worlds (electronic text): www.literature.org/authors/wells-herbert-george/the-war-of-the worlds/