BACKGROUND INFORMATION - BIOGRAPHY

Much of WellsÂ’s social consciousness most likely resulted from his childhood and early adult life. Born in Bromley, Kent on September 21, 1866, Wells was the son of a shopkeeper and former domestic servant. In 1880, his fatherÂ’s store had financial difficulties, forcing WellsÂ’s mother to get a job on a nearby estate, and Wells to become the apprentice to a draper, like his brothers before him. As an avid reader since boyhood--a result of an accident in which he broke his hip-- and not keen on the idea of working as a draper for the rest of his life, Wells hated the job, and managed to secure a post for himself as a teacher/pupil at the Midhurst Grammar School in 1883. Soon after, he began attending the Normal School of Science in London.

There he learned biology with T.H. Huxley, perhaps feeding the interest which would manifest itself in his science fiction novels. In 1887, he left the school without a degree, and taught until receiving a B.Sc. in Zoology in 1890. He began his career as a writer in 1893, while working as a teacher in a correspondence college, but his first success was his first novel, The Time Machine, published in 1895. He quickly followed with three more of his best-known works: The Island of Dr. Moreau in 1896, The Invisible Man in 1897 and The War of the Worlds in 1898.

Each of the first four novels he wrote deal with fantastic storylines involving scientific processes, or new scientific understanding. It is because of these novels that H.G. Wells is considered one of, if not the, father of science fiction. In The Time Machine, the protagonist is able to travel hundreds of thousands, and even millions of years into the future. In The Island of Dr. Moreau, a scientist transforms animals into humanlike creatures. In The Invisible Man, a scientist attempts to gain superhuman powers through his science, and in The War of the Worlds, Martians attack the earth. Two lesser known novels, The First Men on the Moon, published in 1901, and The War in the Air, published in 1908, contribute to WellsÂ’s reputation for prophecy, as he imagines space flight and air combat, respectively.

Though Wells might be known best for predicting much of what came to be, as in these cases and the splitting of the atom (The World Set Free, 1914), he attempted to not only express the potentials for science, but seriously consider the future mankind, based on the way the present society conducts itself. This is particularly true for The Time Machine, in which WellsÂ’s origins in a lower class family--which though not laborers, was far from the aristocracy--possibly serve as the starting point for his social critique of the wealthy citizens of London. Wells would remain active in the political scene, running for Parliament (somewhat against his will) twice, and would continue to attack Victorian society, publishing several pamphlets on this subject throughout his life.

H.G. Wells went on to write hundreds of books, short stories and essays, until he died in London on August 18, 1946.

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