Through the Prism of Science: Exploring the Fictional World of H. G. Wells
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56062/gtrs.2022.1.1.2Keywords:
Victorian age, radical ideas, science fiction, scientific humanism, dystopiaAbstract
The closing phase of the Victorian age, especially the nineties, witnessed radical changes in its massive literary output. As a reflection of collective taste and stable order of reality, the novel was slowly getting marginalized by other genres that would have far-reaching repercussions even in the early twentieth century. This was the period dominated by G. B. Shaw and the Fabians, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Thompson, Kipling, Henley, the early Yeats, Housman and Davidson. Due to several socio-political and economic factors, the unquestioned authoritarianism of the Victorian age was coming to an end, though the sunlight years of the Edwardian era would continue to exude warmth for some more time for the British public. Among these writers, Wells, with his scientific humanism, and Shaw, with his Socialist philosophy, represent new attitudes to society by incorporating radical ideas in their writings.
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Endnotes:
Wells, H.G. The First Men on the Moon , Chatto and Windus, London 1954, pp. 36-37.
Hammond, J.R. An H.G. Wells Companion, the Macmillan Press Ltd., London and Basingstoke, 1979, p. 98.
H. G. Wells. Tales of Life and Adventure, Collins, London and Glasgow, 1954, p. 21.
Shippey, Tom (Ed.). The Oxford book of Science Fiction Stories, OUP, Oxford, 1992, p. X (Introduction).
Primary Sources:
Wells, H.G. The First Men on the Moon , Chatto and Windus, London 1954.
---------------. The Time Machine, S. Chand & co., New Delhi, 1992.
----------------. The War of the Worlds, Gollancz, London, 1951.
----------------. Tales of Life and Adventure, Collins, London and Glasgow 1954.
----------------. Tales of Wonder, Collins, London and Glasgow, 1953.
Secondary Sources:
Amis, Kingsley. New Maps of Hell, Gollancz, London, 1961.
Nicholson, Marjorie Hope. Voyages to the Moon, Macmillan, New York, 1948.
Bergonzi, Berthold. Three Edwardian Novelists, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London 1972.
Hammond, J.R. An H.G. Wells Companion, the Macmillan Press Ltd., London and Basingstoke, 1979.
Shippey, Tom (Ed.). The Oxford book of Science Fiction Stories, OUP, Oxford, 1992.
Parrinder, Patrick. Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching, Methuen, London and New York, 1980.
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