H. G. Wells: The Blinded Visionary

Categories of literature do not share the limitations of human genetics. The wide range of literature we ascribe to Science Fiction is so vast that it can hardly be winnowed down to any set of parents, nor does it need to be. While all humans are bound by a strict genetic limit of one father and one mother, Science Fiction has grown and developed from multiple fathers and mothers. However, general consensus regarding the ancestry of Science Fiction is that it had predominantly two fathers and one mother, and that the mother brought her child to life ten full years before either father was born. These three parents, of course, are Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells. All three of these writers forged a genre that has only grown bigger and stronger since.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley published Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus in 1818, long before Science Fiction was considered a literary genre at all, and is the first iteration of the “Mad Scientist” archetype which has become such a staple of Science Fiction. It was not until ten years later that Jules Verne, the French novelist, was even born, who later wrote such timeless classics as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. It would be another 38 years before the 2^nd “Father of Science Fiction” arrived on the scene in 1866: Herbert George Wells.

There is no doubt that all three of these authors changed the nature of fiction forever, but while Frankenstein could justly be called Gothic Horror, and most of Jules Verne's most famous works fall equally well into Adventure Fantasy, it is H. G. Wells that truly set the boundary lines for true Science Fiction. It is he who formally established the principle of making Science Fiction or Fantasy stories to be as realistic as possible. This premise, now known as “Wells's Law” articulates that only one element should be fantastic, while all others should be mundane, to firmly root the story in believability. But this was hardly his only contribution.

War of the Worlds set the standard for “Aliens Attack!” tropes that have become cliche Science Fiction ever since. His short story, The Chronic Argonauts (published in 1888) established the time travel genre as we know it. Earlier authors had tackled time travel before, but always as some miraculous, inexplicable event—never as something wrought by human hands. This idea was later reinforced by The Time Machine, where he crafted, not only the idea of time travel, but the term “time machine” itself. The Island of Doctor Moreau further investigates the theme of Frankenstein, where the mad scientist tries to take the power of God for himself through the arm of science. This overreach inevitably turns back upon the creator himself in The Island of Doctor Moreau just as it did later in Micheal Crichton's Jurassic Park, both of which mirror the theme of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

While we may delve into some of these other authors and their novels more deeply in later posts (my next post will focus on one of Jules Verne's novels that is likely unknown to you), this article primarily focuses on H. G. Wells himself and why his earliest novels have far outpaced his later works.

Bertie Begins

"Bertie" Wells at a young age.

Herbert “Bertie” Wells was born on September 21^st, 1866. Just a few short hours later and he would have shared a birthday with several remarkable characters including—among others—both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. Alas, it was not to be. In spite of this, his life is a remarkable one, placed early enough for him to fully experience not only the struggles of late Victorian life, but also the first and second world wars.

It was a broken leg that both inspired his early love of literature and then later arrested it. Around the age of eight, the young Herbert broke his leg, and it was during his recovery that he discovered a love of reading. Three years later, Herbert's father, Joseph Wells, fractured his femur, putting an end to his career as a professional athlete. (Yes, those did exist at the time; Joseph Wells was a professional cricket player). This injury placed the family in dire straights (not the band). Their mother ultimately went back to work as a housemaid. Domestic servants were generally expected to live alone onsite, but it is possible that Herbert's sister, Frances, remained with their mother and took up the same occupation. The three sons were placed in apprenticeships while their father took up what work he could. Though Herbert's parents never divorced, they remained separated from then on.

Herbert bounced through several apprenticeships before finding work as a pupil-teacher, thus letting him pay for his own studies by teaching those below him. He earned a Bachelor of Science in 1890 and in 1893 (when The Callahan Chronicles begin) published a two-volume science book on biology. His writing career began soon after, though much of his earliest work were short stories written for newspapers and journals and have not been formally collected. His first full-length novel, The Time Machine, released in 1895, and the rest—unless you have a time machine—is history.

Why the Earliest Works Work

If you ask Google, ChatGPT (or whatever technological overlord you prefer) which are the top five books by H. G. Wells, you will find The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The First Men in the Moon. These are consistently the most praised and the most influential. Interestingly enough, they were all written within the first six years of his long and prodigious writing career. From 1895-1901, Wells produced his greatest works, even though he continued writing for another forty-five years.

Why is this? To be fair, Wells focused more on journalism and commentary than fiction in his later life, including books on science and history—but he was still consistently writing novels later on. I do not mean to say that his later works are not equally insightful or that they are not enjoyable reads. One may claim that his first books were the most unique and original, laying the groundwork for those later on. This may be true, but many of his later works were equally visionary. I think there is a key factor that is consistently overlooked as to why his original novels remained his best.

I have often said that all great stories rely upon Christian principles. Though many are not overtly Christian (nor is that required), all borrow from the Christian worldview or risk falling flat. The current Hollywood trend of “woke storytelling” has proven that bad worldviews make bad stories. Good stories must have heart, courage, selflessness, mercy, hope, justice—all elements forged in original Christianity. The “Christ Figure” has itself become a trope of literature: one who makes the ultimate sacrifice for another. The Galilean from Nazareth forever changed the way stories are written, and I am convinced that the reason why the most popular and well-loved stories always carry Christian themes is because stories are designed to reflect the character of God, the original storyteller. Stories which do not—stories that glorify selfishness, that present reward for evil actions or punishment for good ones, stories with unjust endings or cowardly actions—leave us with feelings of disgust, distaste, and dissatisfaction, even if we cannot express precisely why.

This is by design.

During his life, and especially his later life, Wells began distancing himself from Christianity, slowly moving from his Christian upbringing into disbelief in a personal God and finally into full atheism. Unsurprisingly, as he moved toward atheism, he also moved toward socialism, driven primarily by a belief in Darwinism. It is remarkable how inextricably linked these three concepts are, and how they always lead to misery and suffering, as history so cruelly proves.

The War of the Worlds, published in 1898, contains the following quote regarding the ultimate demise of the Martians through bacterial infection:

“After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved by the littlest things which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth.” Another quote from the same book, and quite as apt today as then, reads: “What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think that God had exempted [us]? He is not an insurance agent.”

Given the too-oft reaction of using religion as a blanket for cowardice, it is no wonder that Wells became disillusioned with mainstream Christianity of the time. There is a reason that the cowardly are listed first in those who “have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” in Revelation 21. Cowardice has never been a virtue, and the evil which results from our continued rebellion against God is not reason to show cowardice or to blame God, as Wells rightly recognizes above. However, in the same book, he also promotes eugenics, tied inextricably to Darwinism and the “survival of the fittest” mentality. While Christianity asks us to care for the weak, the sick, and the poor, Wells states: “We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It's a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race.”

Wells at the End of His Tether

Sadly, rather than dig beyond the clutter of organized religion to find the reality buried beneath, it seems that Wells chose to reject it entirely, and his descent into atheism bleeds heavily into his later works. It is no surprise that he studied under Thomas Huxley—often called “Darwin's Bulldog”—at the Normal School of Science. This alternative religious framework eradicates morality by necessity, replacing it with survival as the ultimate good. Like many other early proponents of Darwinism—including political leaders in the Third Reich and in America—Wells was a great supporter of eugenics, an ideology that advocates for the forced sterilization, abortion, or euthanizing of those deemed “inferior,” which often tied directly into ideas of “racial purity,” and the inferiority of certain “races” over others. Darwin's theory of Evolution took the world by storm and was heralded as absolute scientific truth—is still heralded as such today, despite countless and increasing problems—and it is Darwinism that gave racism its teeth.

The final book which Wells wrote, Mind at the End of its Tether, fully encapsulates the ultimate result of Darwinian thinking. Entirely pessimistic, it suggests that humanity has reached the end of its progress. It is no surprise that he reached such a conclusion. The first world war, the “War to end Wars” (a phrase coined by H. G. Wells himself) fatally wounded Europe's optimism at the turn of the century. The second “War to end all wars” killed it completely. Science and rationalism had been proudly heralded as humanity's hope, a means to thrust off the bonds of religion, when in fact it only replaced it with a new religion: a religion without hope. Mind at the End of its Tether presents evolution as a relentless, absurd force that will finally replace humanity as it has replaced every species before. By the end of the 19^th century, many believed that religion had failed to solve society's problems. Science was supposed to be the answer. Scientism, the rejection of religion, was itself the new religion. By the start of World War II, Scientism itself had entirely failed and would continue to—and for the same reason: both had abandoned the actual answer.

Just as stories fail when they ignore the elements which God has established for good storytelling, so too does religion, science, politics, or any other system of thought fail when it neglects God's established principles. Rebellion against God is the problem, and any solution that does not address this will only exchange one set of problems for another. Mind at the End of its Tether certainly shows that Wells did not find answers down the path he chose.

H. G. Wells was not only a prolific writer, but equally prolific in his sexual exploits. He was, to put it mildly, a philanderer, and his choices there are no better. His first marriage was to his first cousin, Isabel Mary Smith, in 1891, which lasted only two years, as he had then fallen in love with one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins. His marriage to Amy (who he called Jane) lasted until her death in 1927, but, following in the footsteps of Solomon, it did not stop Wells from having multiple affairs on the side.

The Final Word

There is no doubt that H. G. Wells was a brilliant writer and visionary. Not only did he coin terms like “time machine” and “atomic bomb,” but he also imagined a constantly updated worldwide encyclopedia that would contain the sum of human knowledge and be accessible to everyone. He called it the “World Mind,” while we call it the “Worldwide Web.” His writings inspired scientific breakthroughs in aeronautical flight, spaceflight, and atomic research. Several other predictions—both in opinion articles and fictional stories—have been proven eerily accurate. Ironically, he believed submarines to be entirely impossible (likely in relation to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) and considered airplanes impossible until at least 1950, but lived long enough to see both submarines and airplanes long before then. In 1941, five years before his death, he records in the preface to the republished The War in the Air (originally published in 1908) that his epitaph should read “I told you so. You damned fools.”

The life of H. G. Wells, though successful in many areas, is actually rather a tragic one. This is no reason to avoid his work, nor to ignore its impact. His earlier works have withstood the test of time for good reason and remain invaluable pillars in what Wells dubbed “Scientific Romance” and what we now call Science Fiction. There is much value in his work—and especially his earlier work, before he succumbed entirely to pessimism. Unfortunately, Darwinism had already crept into his writing, just as it has infected the overwhelming majority of Science Fiction since—and naturally so, for so it is. His contemporary, G. K. Chesterton, said that Wells had “Sold his talent for a pot of message.” Unfortunately, the message he bought was not worth the price.

I shall end with another quote from H. G. Wells, written in his 1916 novel, Mr. Britling Sees it Through, which dealt with the Great War and the hardships that came from it. This quote is not only profound, but entirely true. The real tragedy lies in the fact that, whether or not Wells believed these words when he wrote them, he either forgot them or ignored them in his later life. We can only hope that he remembered them again before the end, and aspire never to forget them ourselves.

“Until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, and works to no end. He may have friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honor. But all these things fall into place and life falls into place only with God. Only with God. God, who fights through men against Blind Force and Night and Non-Existence; who is the end, who is the meaning. He is the only king.”

-H. G. Wells

These blogs are designed to give you a brief look at the true history which plays a part in my novels, The Callahan Chronicles.

For more information on this subject or the Callahan Chronicles, check out these links:

The Callahan Chronicles - by Paul Campbell

Grayhound - buy on Amazon

H. G. Wells: Darwin's Disciple - AiG

11 Fascinating Facts about H. G. Wells - Lorna Wallace

The War Inside H. G. Wells - Adam Gopnik

H. G. Wells - Wikipedia