H.G. Wells Selected Short Stories (1958)
Wells' reputation has become such that I feel almost guilty in finding myself disliking anything he's written, although I suppose some of that which constitutes his reputation comes from less than reputable sources. I'll discount any recent resurgence of interest generated by the steampunk phenomenon on the grounds that anyone who glues a cog wheel onto a top hat is by definition an arsehole and is therefore incapable of forming any opinion worth hearing, which still leaves us with Wells as the father of modern science-fiction...
My view is that he is and he isn't. In Trillion Year Spree Brian Aldiss suggests that it was probably Mary Shelley - what with Frankenstein referencing then-cutting edge scientific principals relating to what happens when you run an electric current through a dead frog; except Aldiss then goes on to argue that science isn't really what science-fiction is about, despite already having dismissed Gulliver's Travels and the like. Personally I believe you may as well include Gulliver's Travels, or even Cervantes, because there's probably not much joy to be had in attempting to identify the first science-fiction novel. You just end up going around in circles. Whilst Wells was often pretty sciencey - at least in the stories everyone has heard of - he frequently verges off into fantasy, allegory, or just plain weird, at least as much as anything invoking steam or electricity - which is doubtless partially why Jules Verne apparently regarded him as a bit of a lightweight.
More than anything, Wells seemed to enjoy novelty. Of course there is an element of prophecy to the best of his tales, but from this lot, I'm inclined to wonder whether this might not have simply been the natural development of a writer elaborating on whatever core idea he was working with at the time. The twenty-one mostly short stories in this collection suggest the creative process of an author expanding on a series of quirky ideas, the sort of thing which might occur to you as you wash the dishes or stroll to the shop on the corner for a packet of fags.
A recipe which renders the diner weightless...
A hidden land of blind people...
A prehistoric bird hatches from a mysteriously preserved egg...
Space creatures intrude upon us just as we intrude upon lesser nations...
Wells' reputation has become such that I feel almost guilty in finding myself disliking anything he's written, although I suppose some of that which constitutes his reputation comes from less than reputable sources. I'll discount any recent resurgence of interest generated by the steampunk phenomenon on the grounds that anyone who glues a cog wheel onto a top hat is by definition an arsehole and is therefore incapable of forming any opinion worth hearing, which still leaves us with Wells as the father of modern science-fiction...
My view is that he is and he isn't. In Trillion Year Spree Brian Aldiss suggests that it was probably Mary Shelley - what with Frankenstein referencing then-cutting edge scientific principals relating to what happens when you run an electric current through a dead frog; except Aldiss then goes on to argue that science isn't really what science-fiction is about, despite already having dismissed Gulliver's Travels and the like. Personally I believe you may as well include Gulliver's Travels, or even Cervantes, because there's probably not much joy to be had in attempting to identify the first science-fiction novel. You just end up going around in circles. Whilst Wells was often pretty sciencey - at least in the stories everyone has heard of - he frequently verges off into fantasy, allegory, or just plain weird, at least as much as anything invoking steam or electricity - which is doubtless partially why Jules Verne apparently regarded him as a bit of a lightweight.
More than anything, Wells seemed to enjoy novelty. Of course there is an element of prophecy to the best of his tales, but from this lot, I'm inclined to wonder whether this might not have simply been the natural development of a writer elaborating on whatever core idea he was working with at the time. The twenty-one mostly short stories in this collection suggest the creative process of an author expanding on a series of quirky ideas, the sort of thing which might occur to you as you wash the dishes or stroll to the shop on the corner for a packet of fags.
A recipe which renders the diner weightless...
A hidden land of blind people...
A prehistoric bird hatches from a mysteriously preserved egg...
Space creatures intrude upon us just as we intrude upon lesser nations...
I assume that some of these ideas either had legs or simply caught Wells on a good day, resulting in the classics upon which his reputation was justifiably founded - The War of the Worlds and the rest. Perhaps the others either never really required novel length or just weren't very good. I may simply have detected a pattern which isn't there, and this might all be down to personal taste; but that said, once done with The Time Machine and The Country of the Blind - both of which I found enjoyable, there followed a run of nine stories ranging from either dull to barely comprehensible, with the bewildering Lord of the Dynamos representing the lowest ebb. Having read The Food of the Gods I was already aware of the possibility of not everything written by Wells having been a masterpiece, but I was surprised at how tough going this collection became so early on. Happily, for whatever reason, it picks up around halfway through with In the Abyss and remains more or less consistent up to the last page from that point on; but I'm still puzzled as to how these stories were selected, particularly given that he must surely have churned out a million of the things.
Whilst we're frowning, I could also have done without use of the term nigger in quite so many instances, but I suppose it comes with the era and the attitudes of the time, as probably exemplified in the aforementioned Lord of the Dynamos. Wells, lest we forget, held some initial sympathies with that whole eugenics deal, so I suppose we should at least be glad that he appears to have revised such views to the contrary in later years. He's still written some of the greatest science-fiction novels of all time so the reputation is justified, but I suppose they can't all be classics.
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