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| Five
Great Novels by HG Wells check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
This rather pessimistic view of
the potential for mankind has inspired a lot of Science Fiction. The story comes
across as a hopeful one despite this and where one person can make a difference.
The storyline was closely followed by the 1960 film version with Rod Taylor which
gave me nightmares for years. The
Island Of Doctor Moreau:-
Wells' 'man-beasts' are hideous but it is the mind of Moreau and therefore
man that Wells finds insupportable. He reminds us that we have a duty to conserve
and protect not to wilfully try to create like God. War Of The Worlds:- Wells gives us a step-by-step narrative of one man's experiences of the war. He also adds in descriptions 'passed on' to our narrator which feel more forced. He is trying to convey the immediacy, the fear and despair experienced by the human race at a dark point in its history. Wells had not experienced the mass slaughter of total war at the time of writing but the attacks by the Martians
in their tripods bringing wholesale destruction through the use of gas and heat
rays is remarkably prescient of the Great War and the use of chemical weapons
for the first time. The
First Men In The Moon:- When
Griffin, a scientist, experiments and makes himself invisible, he thinks it marks
the end of restraint and will bring great freedoms. Instead, he suffers from a
kind of mania and causes much damage and destruction. Much of the story is about
bringing this man 'to order'. He has disordered himself and therefore society
and cannot exist. This short novel sees the scientific experiments
as exciting but dangerous. The invisible man free from the restraint of society
becomes a danger to all and himself. These are all books you may have read or perhaps thought you had read because of the amount of imitators out there. Now over one hundred years old, they are still very readable and many of the concepts they embody we are still struggling with today. In 'The Island Of Doctor
Moreau', the animal experimentation is still a moral problem. Travelling to the
Moon or to Mars are still hot topics. Invisible men? Well alright, then the experimentation
in the areas of gene therapy and stem cells also addresses the problem of what
is right for society. With all five books in one large softback, this is a very good value purchase and Wells continues to entertain. With a proposed new screen version of 'War Of The Worlds' it seems like an ideal time to catch up with one of the greats of Science Fiction. Sue Davies
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OTHER REVIEWS - September 2004
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The
Time Machine:-
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