H.G. Wells
Traversing Time
Series: Early Classics of Science Fiction
Sales Date: 2004-09-22
354 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in
A look inside one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
The English writer Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) is one of the giants of science fiction. His early novels, The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, invented a number of themes now classic in science fiction. But he also wrote mainstream novels, journalism, political tracts, a memoir, and purely didactic fiction designed to support his various causes. In this comprehensive new critical study, W. Warren Wagar traces Wells's obsession with the unfolding of public time—in short, with the history and future of humankind—to show the persisting and provocative relevance of Wells's work.
Most interest in Wells today centers on his science fiction, but Wagar contends that one cannot fully understand or enjoy the science fiction without exploring the mind that produced it. This accessible overview takes the reader through dozens of Wells's most important works, following the twists and turns of his thought as he struggled with the great issues of human provenance and destiny.
A Personal Prologue
The Trace of the Flow of Thought
The Universe Rigid and Unique
Romances of Evolution
A Classic Dystopia
The Point of No Return
Modernizing Utopia
Writing Novels
Wells at War
Education versus Catastrophe
The Open Conspirator
Romances of Revolution
Before and Beyond Modernism
Wells at War Again
A Personal Epilogue
W. WARREN WAGAR is Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at the State University of New York at Binghamton, author of 11 books, including A Short History of the Future (1999), and editor of The Open Conspiracy: H.G. Wells on World Revolution (2002).
"Comprehensive and compelling, assertive and argumentative, it's a lot like Wells himself, and that quality of subversive, angry brilliance lights the book from within. Wagar's examination is brisk, personal, original. In a word, wonderful."
~Greg Bear, author of Darwin's Children
"An important and wide-ranging study of one of the most important writers of the twentieth century."
~David Seed, Professor of English, Liverpool University
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