Showing posts with label H. G. Wells. Show all posts
Showing posts with label H. G. Wells. Show all posts

Thursday, May 25, 2023

The Life of the Mind


The Coen Brothers: Barton Fink (1991)

All Balled Up at Head Office


Certainly the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, do not present a particularly attractive picture of the writing life in their satirical masterpiece Barton Fink. "You never listen!" John Goodman (aka Karl "Mad Dog" Mundt) thunders at the hapless Barton as he charges down the burning corridor.

I published a post called "Two Views of the Writer" some years ago, but now I'd like to update the examples I gave there with my own favourite description of what Barton Fink refers to as "the life of the mind". It comes from H. G. Wells' 1896 short story "The Lost Inheritance":

The Daily Mirror: H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

“My uncle — my maternal uncle ... had — what shall I call it — ? A weakness for writing edifying literature. Weakness is hardly the word — downright mania is nearer the mark. He’d been librarian in a Polytechnic, and as soon as the money came to him he began to indulge his ambition. It’s a simply extraordinary and incomprehensible thing to me. Here was a man of thirty-seven suddenly dropped into a perfect pile of gold, and he didn’t go — not a day’s bust on it. One would think a chap would go and get himself dressed a bit decent — say a couple of dozen pair of trousers at a West End tailor’s; but he never did. You’d hardly believe it, but when he died he hadn’t even a gold watch. It seems wrong for people like that to have money. All he did was just to take a house, and order in pretty nearly five tons of books and ink and paper, and set to writing edifying literature as hard as ever he could write. ...

“He was a curious little chap, was my uncle, as I remember him. ... Hair just like these Japanese dolls they sell, black and straight and stiff all round the brim and none in the middle, and below, a whitish kind of face and rather large dark grey eyes moving about behind his spectacles. ... He looked a rummy little beggar, I can tell you. Indoors it was, as a rule, a dirty red flannel dressing-gown and a black skull-cap he had. That black skull-cap made him look like the portraits of all kinds of celebrated people. He was always moving about from house to house, was my uncle, with his chair which had belonged to Savage Landor, and his two writing-tables, one of Carlyle’s and the other of Shelley’s, so the dealer told him, and the completest portable reference library in England, he said he had — and he lugged the whole caravan, now to a house at Down, near Darwin’s old place, then to Reigate, near Meredith, then off to Haslemere, then back to Chelsea for a bit, and then up to Hampstead. He knew there was something wrong with his stuff, but he never knew there was anything wrong with his brains. It was always the air, or the water, or the altitude, or some tommy-rot like that. ‘So much depends on environment,’ he used to say, and stare at you hard, as if he half suspected you were hiding a grin at him somewhere under your face. ‘So much depends on environment to a sensitive mind like mine.’”

“What was his name? You wouldn’t know it if I told you. He wrote nothing that anyone has ever read — nothing. No one could read it. He wanted to be a great teacher, he said, and he didn’t know what he wanted to teach any more than a child. So he just blethered at large about Truth and Righteousness, and the Spirit of History, and all that. Book after book he wrote and published at his own expense. He wasn’t quite right in his head, you know really; and to hear him go on at the critics — not because they slated him, mind you — he liked that — but because they didn’t take any notice of him at all. ‘What do the nations want?’ he would ask, holding out his brown old claw. ‘Why, teaching — guidance! They are scattered upon the hills like sheep without a shepherd. There is War and Rumours of War, the unlaid Spirit of Discord abroad in the land, Nihilism, Vivisection, Vaccination, Drunkenness, Penury, Want, Socialistic Error, Selfish Capital! Do you see the clouds, Ted —?’ My name, you know — ‘Do you see the clouds lowering over the land? and behind it all — the Mongol waits!’ He was always very great on Mongols, and the Spectre of Socialism, and suchlike things.”

“Then out would come his finger at me, and with his eyes all afire and his skull-cap askew, he would whisper: ‘And here am I. What did I want? Nations to teach. Nations! I say it with all modesty, Ted, I could. I would guide them; nay! But I will guide them to a safe haven, to the land of Righteousness, flowing with milk and honey.’”

“That’s how he used to go on. Ramble, rave about the nations, and righteousness, and that kind of thing. Kind of mincemeat of Bible and blethers. From fourteen up to three-and-twenty, when I might have been improving my mind, my mother used to wash me and brush my hair (at least in the earlier years of it), with a nice parting down the middle, and take me, once or twice a week, to hear this old lunatic jabber about things he had read of in the morning papers, trying to do it as much like Carlyle as he could, and I used to sit according to instructions, and look intelligent and nice, and pretend to be taking it all in. ...

“’A moment!’ he would say. ‘A moment!’ over his shoulder. ‘The mot juste, you know, Ted, le mot juste. Righteous thought righteously expressed — Aah —! Concatenation. And now, Ted,’ he’d say, spinning round in his study chair, ‘how’s Young England?’ That was his silly name for me.”

“Well, that was my uncle, and that was how he talked — to me, at any rate. With others about he seemed a bit shy. And he not only talked to me, but he gave me his books, books of six hundred pages or so, with cock-eyed headings, ‘The Shrieking Sisterhood,’ ‘The Behemoth of Bigotry,’ ‘Crucibles and Cullenders,’ and so on. All very strong, and none of them original. The very last time, but one, that I saw him, he gave me a book. He was feeling ill even then, and his hand shook and he was despondent. I noticed it because I was naturally on the look-out for those little symptoms. ‘My last book, Ted,’ he said. ‘My last book, my boy; my last word to the deaf and hardened nations;’ and I’m hanged if a tear didn’t go rolling down his yellow old cheek. He was regular crying because it was so nearly over, and he hadn’t only written about fifty-three books of rubbish. ‘I’ve sometimes thought, Ted —’ he said, and stopped.”

“’Perhaps I’ve been a bit hasty and angry with this stiff-necked generation. A little more sweetness, perhaps, and a little less blinding light. I’ve sometimes thought — I might have swayed them. But I’ve done my best, Ted.’”

“And then, with a burst, for the first and last time in his life he owned himself a failure. It showed he was really ill. He seemed to think for a minute, and then he spoke quietly and low, as sane and sober as I am now. ‘I’ve been a fool, Ted,’ he said. ‘I’ve been flapping nonsense all my life. Only He who readeth the heart knows whether this is anything more than vanity. Ted, I don’t. But He knows, He knows, and if I have done foolishly and vainly, in my heart — in my heart —’”

“Just like that he spoke, repeating himself, and he stopped quite short and handed the book to me, trembling. Then the old shine came back into his eye. I remember it all fairly well, because I repeated it and acted it to my old mother when I got home, to cheer her up a bit. ‘Take this book and read it,’ he said. ‘It’s my last word, my very last word. I’ve left all my property to you, Ted, and may you use it better than I have done.’ And then he fell a-coughing.”

“I remember that quite well even now, and how I went home cock-a-hoop, and how he was in bed the next time I called. ... He was sinking fast. But even then his vanity clung to him.

“’Have you read it?’ he whispered.”

“’Sat up all night reading it,’ I said in his ear to cheer him. ‘It’s the last,’ said I, and then, with a memory of some poetry or other in my head, ‘but it’s the bravest and best.’”

“He smiled a little and tried to squeeze my hand as a woman might do, and left off squeezing in the middle, and lay still. ‘The bravest and the best,’ said I again, seeing it pleased him. But he didn’t answer. ... I looked at his face, and his eyes were closed, and it was just as if somebody had punched in his nose on either side. But he was still smiling. It’s queer to think of — he lay dead, lay dead there, an utter failure, with the smile of success on his face.

Helen Allingham: Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)


The will, alas, is nowhere to be found, so the whole estate goes to another, far less attentive nephew instead. The narrator falls "on hard times, because as you see, the only trade I knew was legacy-cadging."
"I was hunting round my room to find something to raise a bit on for immediate necessities, and the sight of all those presentation volumes — no one will buy them, not to wrap butter in, even — well, they annoyed me. I promised him not to part with them, and I never kept a promise easier. I let out at them with my boot, and sent them shooting across the room. One lifted at the kick, and spun through the air. And out of it flapped — You guess?

“It was the will. He’d given it to me himself in that very last volume of all.”

... “It just shows you the vanity of authors,” he said, looking up at me. “It wasn’t no trick of his. He’d meant perfectly fair. He’d really thought I was really going home to read that blessed book of his through. But it shows you, don’t it —?” his eye went down to the tankard again —, “It shows you too, how we poor human beings fail to understand one another.”

H. G. Wells: The Plattner Story and Others (1897)


It's a cruel story, in many ways. The absurdity of the uncle's ambitions, all his attempts to sound like Carlyle or some other great sage, are skewered with immaculate precision by the ruthless young Wells, whose books, in 1896, were already starting to sell - in increasingly large numbers.

But the last laugh is, of course, on the nephew, whose cadging flattery inspires the old man to slip him what he wants most, the will, in this furtive way. And yet, one can hear a certain reluctant affection breaking through all the cynical chatter - despite himself, it's hard to believe that he didn't feel something for his uncle. After all, he didn't have to go quite to those lengths to placate him: "It’s the last, but it’s the bravest and best."

I've wondered sometime if this early story came into Wells's mind at all as he was composing his own last book - not so much of Bible, but of Science and blethers - Mind at the End of Its Tether, in 1945. He'd long since lost his audience, and was largely talking to himself by this stage. But there's a horrible woolly vagueness about his work at the end which is sadly reminiscent of the author of The Shrieking Sisterhood, The Behemoth of Bigotry, or Crucibles and Cullenders ... Beware of what you mock, because that may turn out to be you in the end.



I was reminded irresistibly of this story when I came across an article on "The dream job most New Zealanders long for, and how to get it", by Annemarie Quill, on the Stuff website in January this year:
One career tops the list in Aotearoa as the most desirable job in the country, according to new Google search data, yet it is not always the easiest or best paying.

The dream job that most New Zealanders long to do for a living has been revealed by global analysis of 12-months of Google search data around job types, including the question “How to be a...”

The answer for Kiwis was, apparently ... a writer.
But what kind of a writer?


NZ Herald: Keri Hulme & Eleanor Catton (28/1/15)
Kiwis aspiring to win the Booker prize like Eleanor Catton or Keri Hulme, or think they can soar to the top of bestseller lists by knocking out the next Harry Potter or Fifty Shades, could find that the reality of being a writer might not live up to the dream.

“There are big rewards if you reach the very top and yet, it also promises to be a gruelling career for many filled with rejection, self-doubt and financial concerns,” said a spokesperson for Remitly, the financial services group which collated the data.
Bay of Plenty book editor Chad Dick agrees that "It’s a career that people should follow for love, not money ... If the thought of having your book in your hand is enough, then you are half way there.”
New Zealand sports journalist turned novelist Peter White said he wasn’t too surprised that so many New Zealanders dreamed of writing.

“I would have thought it would be All Black, but it makes sense. Everyone has a story inside them, and writing is the perfect way to express it.”
It's not that there isn't a lot of very sensible advice in this article: there is. Those of us in the trade of teaching Creative Writing certainly have to get used to introducing - as diplomatically as possible - a touch of realism into the unrealistically lofty hopes and dreams of aspiring novelists and poets.

But the question still needs a good deal of unpacking. Is it the idea of being a writer that attracts people, or the actual brute work of writing? The rewards, when they come, are seldom commensurate to the superhuman effort of creating something genuinely worth reading - and the prodigies who seemingly effortlessly spin stories out of thin air are rarer than one might think.

In the end "the thought of having his book in his hand" was apparently not enough for Wells's uncle - even that tottering stack of 53-odd self-published tomes - as he despaired on his deathbed. What he craved was some whisper of recognition. Did he believe those last lying words of his nephew? Perhaps - perhaps not.
But he was still smiling. It’s queer to think of — he lay dead, lay dead there, an utter failure, with the smile of success on his face.

Jack Ross: Biblioblitz (2006)


Perhaps that's the final irony of Wells's story. It's presumably meant to be a satire on the vanity of authors, but no writer can read it without feeling a reluctant affinity with that poor absurd old man with his vanload of paper and Walter Savage Landor's chair.

"Fake it till you make it." I remember hearing Martha Stewart angrily denouncing this doctrine on her own abortive version of The Apprentice Reality TV show: "I never faked anything. I went to jail, for God's sake!"

I'm not quite sure how being convicted of insider trading [Sorry: I've been prompted to make a correction here - "the charges of securities fraud were thrown out, Ms. Stewart was found guilty of four counts of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators"] equates with not being a fake, but then "that's just facts", as another popular adage has it. All writers are fakes. Even the ones who win huge prizes and the adulation of millions have, somewhere inside them, some last remaining vestiges of impostor syndrome.

Which is not to say that there's no difference between H. G. Wells, or Thomas Carlyle, and the poor deluded uncle in the story - but it's more one of degree and scale than of species. If I had to pick a patron saint of writers, it would definitely be the uncle.


H. G. Wells: The Short Stories (1927)


Thursday, January 07, 2021

SF Luminaries: H. G. Wells



H. G. Wells (1911)


"I beg your pardon, sir," he said in his rather thin cockney voice, "is this your book?"
"It doesn't matter at all," said Wimsey gracefully, "I know it by heart. I only brought it along with me because it's handy for reading a few pages when you're stuck in a place like this for the night. You can always take it up and find something entertaining."
"This chap Wells," pursued the red-haired man, "he's what you'd call a very clever writer, isn't he? It's wonderful how he makes it all so real, and yet some of the things he says, you wouldn't hardly think they could really be possible. ...


Dorothy L. Sayers: Hangman's Holiday (1933)


So begins the first story, "The Image in the Mirror", in Dorothy Sayer's detective story collection Hangman's Holiday. Lord Peter Wimsey's interlocutor goes on to discuss with him the implications of H. G. Wells's "The Plattner Story", an account of a schoolmaster who gets blown into the fourth dimension and comes back reversed: his left turned to right, his right to left.



It's pretty clear that the book they're discussing is the then fairly recently published omnibus edition of The Short Stories of H. G. Wells. What I find most interesting about their conversation, though, is Wimsey's throwaway line about knowing it "by heart".

There was a time when this was my favourite book in the world, and I too knew it virtually by heart. In fact, I had a kind of ritual which involved trying to read the whole thing - all 1100-odd pages - in one day, but it's not an experiment I would really recommend.



H. G. Wells: Short Stories (1952)


By then the stories were so familiar to me that I could practically recite them, racing from The Time Machine:
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.
... all the way through to "A Dream of Armageddon", with its wonderfully poetic last lines:
"Nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! My God! Great birds that fought and tore."


H. G. Wells: Complete Short Stories (1970)


Although it was subsequently reprinted under the title The Complete Short Stories, the collection is by no means that - Wells, after all, had another two decades to live when it first appeared.

The 62 stories (and one essay) are divided into five sections, four of which reprint earlier stand-alone collections of Wells's:
  • The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents [1895]
  • The Plattner Story and Others [1897]
  • Tales of Space and Time [1899]
  • Twelve Stories and a Dream [1903]
The opening section, The Time Machine and Other Stories, never published separately in book form, contains some of his strongest stories, published piecemeal throughout the 1890s. There are also another five separate stories grouped between sections 4 and 5 (for fuller details, see my breakdown of the contents in the Bibliography below).



There is, however, another collection entitled The Complete Short Stories. This one was edited by John Hammmond in 1998. As well as all of the stories included in the 1927 collection - with the exception of the short novel The Time Machine - it includes another 22, most of them previously published in Hammond's 1984 collection The Man With a Nose and Other Uncollected Stories of H. G. Wells.

No doubt further stories will continue to surface from time to time (for more information, see the "H. G. Wells Bibliography" page on Wikipedia), but for all intents and purposes, these 84 stories might as well be thought of as the established canon.

As Dave, one of the commentators on this book on Goodreads, informs us:
This collection tied for 4th on the Arkham Survey for Basic SF titles ... behind “Seven Science Fiction Novels” by H. G. Wells (the winner), Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, and Olaf Stapledon’s “Last and First Men”. It also finished 19th on the 1952 Astounding/Analog All-Time Poll.


H. G. Wells: Seven Science Fiction Novels (1934)


Those seven novels were very well chosen. They consist of:
  1. The First Men in the Moon [1901]
  2. The Island of Dr. Moreau [1896]
  3. The War of the Worlds [1898]
  4. The Invisible Man [1897]
  5. The Time Machine [1895]
  6. The Food of the Gods [1904]
  7. In the Days of the Comet [1906]
It's hard to imagine a more influential set of titles. Between them they introduced virtually every standard trope of the SF genre as it would develop over the next hundred years: space travel, time travel, alien invasion, utopian futures, genetic manipulation ... pretty much everything except robots (which would be added to the mix by Czech writer Karel Čapek's play R.U.R in 1920).



The dazzling talent of the young Wells seemed destined to sweep everything before it. As C. S. Lewis once quipped, however, as time went on he increasingly "traded his birthright for a pot of message" (if you don't get the pun, it's probably because you weren't brought up on the Authorised Version of the Bible. In the Book of Genesis, Esau trades his birthright to Jacob "for a mess of pottage"). Har-de-har-har. Maybe you had to be there ...

His later work does seem to lack the zest of those remarkable works of his first decade as a writer, but he remains one of the great sages and pathfinders for all subsequent work in the field of Speculative Fiction. The fact that he moved so easily from social satire to straight science fiction to the fantastic and supernatural (something very few of his successors succeeded in doing) meant that he avoided being typecast as a 'genre' writer. Though the sheer clarity and power of his prose also had a lot to do with that.

In 1930 Odhams Press published a 12-volume edition of his selected fiction which covered most of his major work in that form:



Odhams: H. G. Wells Collection (1930)


The H. G. Wells Collection. 12 vols. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930]:
  1. The Invisible Man / The Secret Places of the Heart / God the Invisible King (1897, 1922 & 1917)
  2. Love and Mr Lewisham / Marriage (1900 & 1912)
  3. The First Men in the Moon / The World Set Free (1901 & 1914)
  4. Kipps / The Research Magnificent (1905 & 1915)
  5. Tono-Bungay / A Modern Utopia (1909 & 1905)
  6. The History of Mr Polly / The War in the Air (1910 & 1908)
  7. The Sleeper Awakes / Men Like Gods (1910 & 1923)
  8. The New Machiavelli / The Food of the Gods (1911 & 1904)
  9. The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman / The Dream (1914 & 1924)
  10. Mr Britling Sees it Through / In the Days of the Comet (1916 & 1906)
  11. Joan and Peter: A Story of an Education / "The Country of the Blind" / "Jimmy Goggles the God" / "Mr Brisher’s Treasure" (1918, 1904, 1898 & 1899)
  12. Collected Short Stories (1927)




H. G. Wells: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)


I suppose, if I had to choose myself from this gallery of masterpieces, the one I would go for would be The Island of Doctor Moreau. It's been filmed - badly - on more than one occasion (most recently with Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando in the principal roles), but the book itself has a haunting, nightmarish quality which completely entranced me when I first read it as a teenager.



John Frankenheimer, dir.: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1996)


The figure of the mad scientist, tampering with God's work without fear or scruple, who consequently gets his comeuppance, comes to us straight from Frankenstein, of course. But the colonial setting transfers it into the morally compromised world of the early Conrad: Almayer's Folly (1895), say, or An Outcast of the Islands (1896).



Don Taylor, dir.: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1977)


There are many themes jostling for dominance in this strange early story of Wells's: colonialism and colonial exploitation principal - in my view, at least - among them. One could almost see it as a counterblast to Kipling's Jungle Books (1894-1895). The strange parodic chants the half-animals live by certainly recall some of the stories and songs of Mowgli and his various brethren.



Big Finish: The Island of Doctor Moreau (2017)


The colonial theme continues to recur in Wells's later fiction: in The First Men in the Moon (1901) and - perhaps most explicitly - Tono-Bungay (1909). I suppose the thing which makes Wells's early fiction so durable, in fact, is its refusal to simplify or avoid difficult questions of exploitation and brutality.

Later, of course, when he became a sage, he seems to have felt a responsibility to the 'left' in general which put him in strange company: co-authoring a book with Josef Stalin is not something most of us would want on our CV. Expediency and responsibility choked the initial outrage he felt - as a writer - at injustice and cruelty, just as personal prosperity gradually robbed his social satire of its edge.

The important thing about H. G. Wells, though, is not so much that he went off the rails a bit in his later years, as the extraordinary heights he had to fall from. I would argue strongly that the best place to start is by reading the original edition of The Stories of H. G. Wells, in any of its innumerable reprints. After that, the Seven Science Fiction Novels of 1934 will supply most of the rest of his truly durable work.



H. G. Wells: The History of Mr Polly (1910)


Mind you, this leaves out a number of excellent contemporary novels - Kipps and The History of Mr Polly, for instance. The Sleeper Awakes and The War in the Air should probably have been included among the best of his early Science Fiction novels, too.



Henri Lanos: When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)




The recent news that the Royal Mint has just issued a special coin commemorating 75 years since H. G. Wells's death certainly confirms his continuing importance in British (and world) culture. On the other hand, certain errors on the coin - documented at length by various critics - show how little accurate knowledge of his work people actually have:
As the name suggests, the tripod only had three legs in Wells' novel. "How many people did this have to go through? Did they know how to count? Do they know what the "tri" prefix means??" artist Holly Humphries asked on Twitter.


The War of the Worlds (2018)
[Note the three legs and flexible limbs in the illustration above]


Not only this, but the portrait of the 'invisible man' on the coin has also drawn criticism:
Fans were also disappointed by the appearance of a top hat, supposedly in homage to Wells' book "The Invisible Man." The scientist Griffin, the titular Invisible Man, "was no gentleman, and did not wear a top hat," [Adam Roberts, vice-president of the H.G. Wells Society,] said.
"I suspect the designer has been influenced consciously or otherwise by DC Comics' 'Gentleman Ghost' - but he had nothing to do with Wells."


Here, however, I would have to take issue with the critics, whose knowledge of Victorian mores may not be quite so profound as they think. The original drawing above, by Wells himself, in a presentation copy of the book's first edition, clearly shows the invisible man in a top hat.

To complete the hat-trick, another flaw was spotted by Roberts, who said:
"The legend written around the rim of the coin, 'GOOD BOOKS ARE THE WAREHOUSES OF IDEAS', is (though it's sometimes attributed to Wells by various internet quote-sites) not an actual quotation by Wells."
Chris Costello, the coin's designer, remains defiant, insisting that "he was intentionally reinterpreting imagery from Wells' works for a modern audience."
"The characters in 'War of the Worlds' have been depicted many times, and I wanted to create something original and contemporary," he said.
"My design takes inspiration from a variety of machines featured in the book - including tripods and the handling machines which have five jointed legs and multiple appendages. The final design combines multiple stories into one stylized and unified composition that is emblematic of all of H.G. Well's (sic) work and fits the unique canvas of a coin."
I'll certainly grant that the choice of a four-legged tripod is "original" (though possibly somewhat misguided), and I don't think any responsibility can be laid at Costello's door for the probably spurious quotation, so I suppose the whole affair remains more a cause for celebration than carping criticism. I do wish, though, that artists would make a point of always - not just sometimes - reading the books they've been asked to illustrate.



Bernard Bergonzi: The Early H. G. Wells (1961)






George Charles Beresford: H. G. Wells (1920)

Herbert George Wells
(1866-1946)


    Novels:

  1. The Time Machine (1895)
    • The Short Stories of H. G. Wells. 1927. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1952.
  2. The Wonderful Visit (1895)
  3. The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
    • The Island of Doctor Moreau. 1896. A Magnum Easy Eye Book. New York: Lancer Books, Inc., 1968.
  4. The Wheels of Chance (1896)
  5. The Invisible Man (1897)
    • The Invisible Man / The Secret Places of the Heart / God the Invisible King. 1897, 1922 & 1917. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  6. The War of the Worlds (1898)
    • The War of the Worlds. 1898. Penguin Science Fiction. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.
  7. When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)
    • When the Sleeper Wakes. 1899. London: Macmillan & Co. Limited, 1906.
  8. Love and Mr Lewisham (1900)
    • Love and Mr Lewisham / Marriage. 1900 & 1912. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
    • Love and Mr Lewisham. 1900. Introduction by Frank Wells. 1954. Collins Classics. London & Glasgow: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1959.
  9. The First Men in the Moon (1901)
    • The First Men in the Moon / The World Set Free. 1901 & 1914. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
    • The First Men in the Moon. 1901. Introduction by Frank Wells. Fontana Books. London: Collins Clear-Type press, 1966.
  10. The Sea Lady (1902)
    • The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine. 1902. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1948.
  11. The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904)
    • The Food of the Gods. 1904. Introduction by Ronald Seth. Collins Classics. London & Glasgow: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1955.
  12. Kipps (1905)
    • Kipps / The Research Magnificent. 1905 & 1915. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  13. A Modern Utopia (1905)
    • Tono-Bungay / A Modern Utopia. 1909 & 1905. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  14. In the Days of the Comet (1906)
    • Mr Britling Sees it Through / In the Days of the Comet. 1916 & 1906. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  15. The War in the Air (1908)
    • The History of Mr Polly / The War in the Air. 1910 & 1908. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  16. Tono-Bungay (1909)
    • Tono-Bungay / A Modern Utopia. 1909 & 1905. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  17. Ann Veronica (1909)
    • Ann Veronica. 1909. Penguin Books 2887. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
  18. The History of Mr Polly (1910)
    • The History of Mr Polly / The War in the Air. 1910 & 1908. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
    • The History of Mr Polly. 1910. Ed. A. C. Ward. The Heritage of Literature Series. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1959.
  19. The Sleeper Awakes (1910)
    • The Sleeper Awakes / Men Like Gods. 1910 & 1923. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  20. The New Machiavelli (1911)
    • The New Machiavelli. 1911. Penguin Books 575. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1946.
  21. Marriage (1912)
    • Love and Mr Lewisham / Marriage. 1900 & 1912. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  22. The Passionate Friends (1913)
    • The Passionate Friends. 1913. London: George Newnes, Limited, n.d.
  23. The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914)
    • The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman / The Dream. 1914 & 1924. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  24. The World Set Free (1914)
    • The First Men in the Moon / The World Set Free. 1901 & 1914. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  25. Bealby: A Holiday (1915)
    • Bealby: A Holiday. 1915. London: George Newnes, Limited, n.d.
  26. [as Reginald Bliss] Boon (1915)
  27. The Research Magnificent (1915)
    • Kipps / The Research Magnificent. 1905 & 1915. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  28. Mr Britling Sees It Through (1916)
    • Mr Britling Sees it Through / In the Days of the Comet. 1916 & 1906. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  29. The Soul of a Bishop (1917)
  30. Joan and Peter: The Story of an Education (1918)
    • Joan and Peter: A Story of an Education / The Country of the Blind / Jimmy Goggles the God / Mr Brisher’s Treasure. 1918, 1904, 1898 & 1899. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  31. The Undying Fire (1919)
  32. The Secret Places of the Heart (1922)
    • The Invisible Man / The Secret Places of the Heart / God the Invisible King. 1897, 1922 & 1917. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  33. Men Like Gods (1923)
    • The Sleeper Awakes / Men Like Gods. 1910 & 1923. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  34. The Dream (1924)
    • The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman / The Dream. 1914 & 1924. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  35. Christina Alberta's Father (1925)
  36. The World of William Clissold (1926)
  37. Meanwhile (1927)
  38. Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928)
    • Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1928.
  39. The Autocracy of Mr. Parham (1930)
  40. The Bulpington of Blup (1932)
  41. The Shape of Things to Come (1933)
    • The Shape of Things to Come. 1933. Corgi SF Collector’s Library. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1974.
  42. Things to Come: A Film Story Based on the Material Contained in His History of the Future “The Shape of Things to Come.” (1936)
    • Things to Come: A Film Story Based on the Material Contained in His History of the Future “The Shape of Things to Come.” 1935. London: The Cresset Press, 1936.
  43. The Croquet Player (1936)
  44. Brynhild (1937)
  45. Star Begotten: A Biological Fantasia (1937)
    • Star Begotten: A Biological Fantasia. 1937. Sphere Science Fiction. London: sphere Books Ltd., 1977.
  46. The Camford Visitation (1937)
  47. Apropos of Dolores (1938)
  48. The Brothers (1938)
  49. The Holy Terror (1939)
  50. Babes in the Darkling Wood (1940)
  51. All Aboard for Ararat (1940)
  52. You Can't Be Too Careful (1941)

  53. Short Stories:

  54. The Short Stories. 1927. London: Ernest Benn, 1948:

      The Time Machine and Other Stories

    1. The Time Machine
    2. The Empire of the Ants
    3. A Vision of Judgement
    4. The Land Ironclads
    5. The Beautiful Suit
    6. The Door in the Wall
    7. The Pearl of Love
    8. The Country of the Blind

    9. The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents [1895]

    10. The Stolen Bacillus
    11. The Flowering of the Strange Orchid
    12. In the Avu Observatory
    13. The Triumphs of a Taxidermist
    14. A Deal in Ostriches
    15. Through a Window
    16. The Temptation of Harringay
    17. The Flying Man
    18. The Diamond Maker
    19. Æpyornis Island
    20. The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes
    21. The Lord of the Dynamos
    22. The Hammerpond Park Burglary
    23. The Moth
    24. The Treasure in the Forest

    25. The Plattner Story and Others [1897]

    26. The Plattner Story
    27. The Argonauts of the Air
    28. The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham
    29. In the Abyss
    30. The Apple
    31. Under the Knife
    32. The Sea-Raiders
    33. Pollock and the Porroh Man
    34. The Red Room
    35. The Cone
    36. The Purple Pileus
    37. The Jilting of Jane
    38. In the Modern Vein: An Unsympathetic Love Story
    39. A Catastrophe
    40. The Lost Inheritance
    41. The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic
    42. A Slip Under the Microscope

    43. The Reconciliation
    44. My First Aeroplane
    45. Little Mother Up the Mörderberg
    46. The Story of the Last Trump
    47. The Grisly Folk

    48. Tales of Space and Time [1899]

    49. The Crystal Egg
    50. The Star
    51. A Story of the Stone Age
    52. A Story of the Days to Come
    53. The Man Who Could Work Miracles

    54. Twelve Stories and a Dream [1903]

    55. Filmer
    56. The Magic Shop
    57. The Valley of Spiders
    58. The Truth About Pyecraft
    59. Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland
    60. The Inexperienced Ghost
    61. Jimmy Goggles the God
    62. The New Accelerator
    63. Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation
    64. The Stolen Body
    65. Mr. Brisher's Treasure
    66. Miss Winchelsea's Heart
    67. A Dream of Armageddon

  55. The Complete Short Stories. Ed. John Hammmond. 1998. London: Phoenix, 1999:

      The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents [1895]

    1. The Stolen Bacillus
    2. The Flowering of the Strange Orchid
    3. In the Avu Observatory
    4. The Triumphs of a Taxidermist
    5. A Deal in Ostriches
    6. Through a Window
    7. The Temptation of Harringay
    8. The Flying Man
    9. The Diamond Maker
    10. Æpyornis Island
    11. The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes
    12. The Lord of the Dynamos
    13. The Hammerpond Park Burglary
    14. The Moth
    15. The Treasure in the Forest

    16. The Plattner Story and Others [1897]

    17. The Plattner Story
    18. The Argonauts of the Air
    19. The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham
    20. In the Abyss
    21. The Apple
    22. Under the Knife
    23. The Sea-Raiders
    24. Pollock and the Porroh Man
    25. The Red Room
    26. The Cone
    27. The Purple Pileus
    28. The Jilting of Jane
    29. In the Modern Vein: An Unsympathetic Love Story
    30. A Catastrophe
    31. The Lost Inheritance
    32. The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic
    33. A Slip Under the Microscope

    34. Tales of Space and Time [1899]

    35. The Crystal Egg
    36. The Star
    37. A Story of the Stone Age
    38. A Story of the Days to Come
    39. The Man Who Could Work Miracles

    40. Twelve Stories and a Dream [1903]

    41. Filmer
    42. The Magic Shop
    43. The Valley of Spiders
    44. The Truth About Pyecraft
    45. Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland
    46. The Inexperienced Ghost
    47. Jimmy Goggles the God
    48. The New Accelerator
    49. Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation
    50. The Stolen Body
    51. Mr. Brisher's Treasure
    52. Miss Winchelsea's Heart
    53. A Dream of Armageddon

    54. The Door in the Wall and Other Stories

    55. The Door in the Wall
    56. The Empire of the Ants
    57. A Vision of Judgment
    58. The Land Ironclads
    59. The Beautiful Suit
    60. The Pearl of Love
    61. The Country of the Blind
    62. The Reconciliation
    63. My First Aeroplane (Little Mother series #1)
    64. Little Mother Up the Mörderberg (Little Mother series #2)
    65. The Story of the Last Trump
    66. The Grisly Folk

    67. Uncollected Stories

    68. A Tale of the Twentieth Century: For Advanced Thinkers
    69. Walcote
    70. The Devotee of Art
    71. The Man with a Nose
    72. A Perfect Gentleman on Wheels
    73. Wayde's Essence
    74. A Misunderstood Artist
    75. Le Mari Terrible
    76. The Rajah's Treasure
    77. The Presence by the Fire
    78. Mr Marshall's Doppelganger
    79. The Thing in No. 7
    80. The Thumbmark
    81. A Family Elopement
    82. Our Little Neighbour
    83. How Gabriel Became Thompson
    84. How Pingwill Was Routed
    85. The Loyalty of Esau Common: A Fragment
    86. The Wild Asses of the Devil
    87. Answer to Prayer
    88. The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper
    89. The Country of the Blind (revised version)

  56. Non-Fiction:

  57. Text-Book of Biology (1893)
  58. [with R. A. Gregory] Honours Physiography (1893)
  59. Certain Personal Matters (1897)
  60. Anticipations of the Reactions of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901)
  61. Mankind in the Making (1903)
  62. The Future in America (1906)
  63. This Misery of Boots (1907)
  64. Will Socialism Destroy the Home? (1907)
  65. New Worlds for Old (1908)
  66. First and Last Things (1908)
  67. Floor Games (1911)
  68. The Great State (1912)
  69. Thoughts From H. G. Wells (1912)
  70. Little Wars (1913)
  71. The War That Will End War (1914)
  72. An Englishman Looks at the World (1914)
  73. The War and Socialism (1915)
  74. The Peace of the World (1915)
  75. What is Coming? (1916)
  76. [as 'D. P.] The Elements of Reconstruction (1916)
  77. God the Invisible King (1917)
    • The Invisible Man / The Secret Places of the Heart / God the Invisible King. 1897, 1922 & 1917. H. G. Wells Collection. London: Odhams Press Limited, [1930].
  78. War and the Future (1917)
  79. Introduction to Nocturne (1917)
  80. In the Fourth Year (1918)
  81. [with Viscount Edward Grey, Lionel Curtis, William Archer, H. Wickham Steed, A. E. Zimmern, J. A. Spender, Viscount Bryce & Gilbert Murray] The Idea of a League of Nations (1919)
  82. The Outline of History (1920)
  83. Russia in the Shadows (1920)
  84. [with Arnold Bennett & Grant Overton] Frank Swinnerton (1920)
  85. The Salvaging of Civilization (1921)
  86. A Short History of the World (1922)
    • A Short History of the World. 1922. Rev. ed. A Pelican Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938.
  87. Washington and the Hope of Peace (1922)
  88. Socialism and the Scientific Motive (1923)
  89. The Story of a Great Schoolmaster: Being a Plain Account of the Life and Ideas of Sanderson of Oundle (1924)
  90. A Year of Prophesying (1925)
  91. A Short History of Mankind (1925)
  92. Mr. Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History" (1926)
  93. Wells' Social Anticipations (1927)
  94. The Way the World is Going (1928)
  95. The Book of Catherine Wells (1928)
  96. The Open Conspiracy (1928)
  97. [with Julian S. Huxley & G. P. Wells] The Science of Life (1930)
  98. Divorce as I See It (1930)
  99. Points of View (1930)
  100. The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931)
  101. The New Russia (1931)
  102. Selections From the Early Prose Works of H. G. Wells (1931)
  103. What Should be Done — Now: A Memorandum on the World Situation (1932)
  104. After Democracy (1932)
  105. [with J. V. Stalin] Marxism vs Liberalism (1934)
  106. Experiment in Autobiography (1934)
    • Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1886). 1934. 2 vols. Jonathan Cape Paperback JCP 64-65. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1969.
  107. The New America: The New World (1935)
  108. The Anatomy of Frustration (1936)
  109. World Brain (1938)
  110. The Fate of Homo Sapiens (1939)
  111. The New World Order (1939)
  112. Travels of a Republican Radical in Search of Hot Water (1939)
  113. The Common Sense of War and Peace (1940)
  114. The Rights of Man (1940)
  115. The Pocket History of the World (1941)
  116. Guide to the New World (1941)
  117. The Outlook for Homo Sapiens (1942)
  118. The Conquest of Time (1942)
  119. [with Lev Uspensky] Modern Russian and English Revolutionaries (1942)
  120. Phoenix: A Summary of the Inescapable Conditions of World Reorganization (1942)
  121. Crux Ansata: An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church (1943)
  122. '42 to '44: A Contemporary Memoir (1944)
  123. [with J. B. S. Haldane & Julian S. Huxley] Reshaping Man's Heritage (1944)
  124. The Happy Turning (1945)
  125. Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945)
  126. Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction (1975)

  127. Secondary:

  128. Bergonzi, Bernard. The Early H. G. Wells: A Study of the Scientific Romances. Manchester, 1961.
  129. Dickson, Lovat. H. G. Wells: His Turbulent Life and Times. 1969. London: Readers Union Limited / Macmillan and Company Limited, 1971.
  130. Ray, Gordon N. H. G. Wells & Rebecca West. 1974. London: Macmillan London Limited, 1974.
  131. West, Anthony. H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life. 1984. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.






Anthony West: H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life (1984)


Sunday, April 05, 2020

The Machine Stops



E. M. Forster: The Machine Stops (1909)


Clearly I'm not the first one to notice the extraordinary prescience shown by E. M. Forster in his long short story "The Machine Stops," first published in The Oxford and Cambridge Review in November 1909.

Forster envisages a world where people live cocooned in little cells, with audiovisual contact with one another, and minimal travel from place to place. His protagonist, Vashti, is largely content with her situation, and displays nothing but irritation at the attempts of her son, Kuno, to interest her in the forbidden regions outside.

Everything - nourishment, entertainment, contact - is supplied by the Machine, which is now the main deity worshipped by mankind, despite having been originally designed to serve them. Now, however, the machine has started to falter, to lag in its daily attentions to the human parasites that infest it.

Kuno wants his mother to accompany him outside, where he is sure that he once saw some living human beings. Her reluctance to do so spells her own doom. As the two of them die, however, they at least have the satisfaction of seeing the possibility of escape from the Machine's mechanical womb.
"But, Kuno, is it true? Are there still men on the surface of the earth? Is this - this tunnel, this poisoned darkness - really not the end?"
He replied: "I have seen them, spoken to them, loved them. They are hiding in the mist and the ferns until our civilisation stops. Today they are the Homeless - tomorrow -"
"Oh, tomorrow - some fool will start the Machine again, tomorrow."
"Never," said Kuno, "never. Humanity has learnt its lesson."
As he spoke, the whole city was broken like a honeycomb. An airship had sailed in through the vomitory into a ruined wharf. It crashed downwards, exploding as it went, rending gallery after galley with its wings of steel. For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky.


H. G. Wells: When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)


Forster himself called his story "a reaction to one of the earlier heavens of H. G. Wells" - presumably the one depicted in the latter's novel When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) - reissued, in revised form, as The Sleeper Awakes in 1912.



Not that Wells's picture of the future - in this novel, at least - is a narrowly utopian one. The society his sleeper, Graham, wakes into is a profoundly troubled one. The amount of his own savings have accumulated, due to compound interest, during the long centuries of his sleep, to such an incredible total that they are now the principal economic mainstay of the world. The rest of the book examines the implications of such capitalist plutocracy as against the apparent hope provided by revolutionary socialism.

Both are found wanting in this bleak early vision by a writer later criticised for his naive acceptance of purely scientific values. Once again, if you read his books yourself rather than accepting such bland critical summaries, the actual implications of his work are far more nuanced and complex.



E. M. Forster (1879-1970)


Be that as it may, Wells' truths were certainly different from Forster's. In a sense they embody two contradictory world-views - based, respectively, on the private and the public life. Forster concerned himself almost exclusively with the personal values bound up in his famous adage: "Only connect." His books are all about moments of emotional epiphany and contact over seemingly unbridgeable gulfs of background and class.

W. H. Auden perhaps expressed it best in the last of his 1938 group of Sonnets from China:
XXI

(to E.M. Foster)

Though Italy and King's are far away,
And Truth a subject only bombs discuss,
Our ears unfriendly, still you speak to us,
Insisting that the inner life can pay.

As we dash down the slope of hate with gladness,
You trip us up like an unnoticed stone,
And, just when we are closeted with madness,
You interrupt us like the telephone.

Yes, we are Lucy, Turton, Philip: we
Wish international evil, are delighted
To join the jolly ranks of the benighted

Where reason is denied and love ignored,
But, as we swear our lie, Miss Avery
Comes out into the garden with a sword.


H. G. Wells (1866-1946)


Wells, by contrast, ended in a state of utter despair, as the Second World War erupted to dash into pieces all his hopes of international betterment. The title of his last book Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945) says it all.

Having said that, though, much though I enjoy Forster's fiction and essays, if it came to a choice between the two, I would go for Wells every time. Forster's Collected Short Stories (1950) is 246 pages long. Wells's Short Stories (1927) runs to over 1,000 pages, and includes such masterpieces as "The Time Machine," "A Story of the Days to Come," "A Dream of Armageddon," and dozens of others - it's one of the great books of the twentieth century.

Luckily, I don't have to choose. I can enjoy both of their different insights, and shelve them side-by-side in a propinquity I fear they could never have achieved in their lifetimes.





Twelve Modern Short Novels
[illustrated by B. Biro (c.1950s)]
Twelve Modern Short Novels: A Collection of the Shorter Works of Writers of Distinction from the Eighties of the Last Century to the Present Day. Decorations by B. Biro. London: Odhams Press Limited, n.d. (c. 1950s).

I see from the inside of my copy (which is light blue rather than red in colour, but is otherwise identical with that pictured above) that I purchased it on 30th September 1977. It was certainly an auspicious day for me.

You can see from the list of contents below just what a treasure-house of stories this book contains. I'd read very few of these authors previously, and it had the effect of introducing me to some of the real triumphs of late nineteenth / early twentieth-century prose.

  1. [1887] - Oscar Wilde: "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime: A Study of Duty"

  2. [1888] - Rudyard Kipling: "The Man Who Would Be King"

  3. [1902] - Joseph Conrad: "Heart of Darkness"

  4. [1911] - E. M. Forster: "The Machine Stops"

  5. [1919] - Max Beerbohm: "Enoch Soames"

  6. [1922] - Aldous Huxley: "The Gioconda Smile"

  7. [1927] - Thornton Wilder: "The Bridge of San Luis Rey"

  8. [1936] - Katherine Anne Porter: "Noon Wine"

  9. [1936] - Graham Greene: "The Basement Room"

  10. [1939] - Ernest Hemingway: "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"

  11. [1945] - Mary Lavin: "The Becker Wives"

  12. [1946] - H. E. Bates: "The Cruise of 'The Breadwinner'"



No editor's name for the volume is given - only that of the illustrator, a certain 'B. Biro' (later to be known as Val Biro). He may - for all I know - have chosen the contents as well, but the contingency seems an unlikely one, given his youth at the time, and the sheer size of his graphic output: "3,000 covers in less than 40 years," as Nick Jones revealed in his "Interview with Val Biro, Artist, Illustrator, Author and Book Cover Designer" in Existential Ennui (4/8/14).

Whoever it was who selected these particular stories certainly did me a great favour, though. I suppose that I would have read the more canonical ones sooner or later, but authors such as Katharine Anne Porter and Thornton Wilder were much less familiar currency at the time.

Also, would I really have appreciated "The Machine Stops" quite so much if it hadn't been bookended between the dark profundities of "Heart of Darkness" and the bittersweet satire of Beerbohm's "Enoch Soames"?



"The Basement Room," too. It would be many years before I saw Carol Reed's film The Fallen Idol (1948), and then, I'm afraid, my main impulse was to exclaim that he'd got it wrong. The squalid suburban horrors of Greene's parable had somehow been transferred to the glamorous setting of an embassy.

The lessons screenwriter and director learnt from this experience must have supplied at least some of the ingredients which went into their next collaboration, the immortal Third Man (1949).