Short Stories
Herbert George Wells was born on September 21, 1866 in Bromley, England. His family was of modest means, with his father working as a professional cricketer and shopkeeper and his mother working as a housekeeper and employer. Wells received an apprenticeship in pharmacology but hated the field. Instead, he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London.
There Wells studied under famous biologist Thomas H. Huxley, whose views on agnosticism would come to influence him. After completing his studies, Wells briefly worked as a teacher before turning to writing full time. He married his cousin Isabel in 1891 but cheated on her repeatedly later in life.
As an author, Wells was a pioneer of science fiction. Some of his most well-known works speculated on the implications of contemporary scientific understandings. “The Time Machine” (1895) imagines time travel, while “The Invisible Man” (1897) explores optics to make a man invisible. One of his most popular works, “The War of the Worlds” (1898) speculated about intelligent extraterrestrial life invading England.
Wells was also an early voice in discussing globalization and the establishment of a world state. Sociologically-oriented novels like “Anticipations” (1901) and “A Modern Utopia” (1905) spoke directly to these concerns. A committed socialist, Wells actively promoted these political views and edited publications dedicated to them as well. During the Great War, he published “Mr. Britling Sees It Through” (1916), viewing the war through an average Englishman’s eyes.
Later literary works included two more utopian novels, autobiographical experimentations, discussions of biology, and even works on wargaming as a basis for understanding international politics. Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature four times but never won. His works remained popular throughout his lifetime, however, and he is remembered as a giant influence on the development and popularity of science fiction today. He died on August 13, 1946 at the age of 79 from liver failure.
The Sea Raiders by H. G. Wells — Until the extraordinary affair at Sidmouth, the peculiar species Haploteuthis ferox was known to science only generically, on the strength of a half-digested tentacle obtained near the Azores, and a decaying body pecked by birds and nibbled by fish, found early in 1896 by Mr. Jennings, near…
Probably you have heard of Hapley—not W. T. Hapley, the son, but the celebrated Hapley, the Hapley of Periplaneta Hapliia
It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun
The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. He moved slowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his…
A Moonlight Fable by H. G. Wells There was once a little man whose mother made him a beautiful suit of clothes. It was green and gold and woven so that I cannot describe how delicate and fine it was, and there was a tie of orange fluffiness that tied up under his chin. And…
Probably you have heard of Hapley—not W. T. Hapley, the son, but the celebrated Hapley, the Hapley of Periplaneta Hapliia, Hapley the entomologist. If so you know at least of the great feud between Hapley and Professor Pawkins, though certain of its consequences may be new to you. For those who have not, a word…
Some business had detained me in Chancery Lane nine in the evening, and thereafter, having some inkling of a headache, I was disinclined either for entertainment or further work. So much of the sky as the high cliffs of that narrow canon of traffic left visible spoke of a serene night, and I determined to…
Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. The difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the fugitives for so long expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse the three men left…
The canoe was now approaching the land. The bay opened out, and a gap in the white surf of the reef marked where the little river ran out to the sea; the thicker and deeper green of the virgin forest showed its course down the distant hill slope. The forest here came close to the…
Three hundred miles and more from Chimborazo, one hundred from the snows of Cotopaxi, in the wildest wastes of Ecuador’s Andes, there lies that mysterious mountain valley, cut off from the world of men, the Country of the Blind. Long years ago that valley lay so far open to the world that men might come…
THE RED ROOM by H. G. Wells “I can assure you,” said I, “that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.” And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand. “It is your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance. “Eight-and-twenty…