H.G.Wells

First Men in the Moon is a lot more chatty dialogue-wise than his previous ones.

"It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medieval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons—now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!"

What a great quote.
I am keeping this.
 
JunkMonkey said:
But the mechanics of setting up an authoritarian threat to self-determination and lack of control coming from within the Trekverse is beyond the capabilities Star Trek's writers. Not their fault. They were constrained by the formula. They didn't have the room to construct long story arcs to deal with the complexities of have such a threat come from within the idealized world Gene Roddenberry spent so long creating. The threat had to come from outside so the tedious perfection of Star Fleet could be preserved and the Enterprise could be threatened by something new next week.
Click to expand...
Actually, they did get into that with Section 9 (or 31 or whatever it was) which made an appearance in TNG, if I recall, and got more play in DS9. It's scariest of all when it comes from within and without. Which, unfortunately, it really does.

But, yes, it was all very un-Roddenberry,
 
Interesting to see a reference to Tesla in First Men in the Moon.
I had not heard of Tesla until the 1990s.
 
There was some comedy to the parts where Cavor is sending messages to Earth and the narrator is challenging his version of event.
Food of the Gods is next. I don't think I have read that before.
 
How about "The War In The Air" 1908, where German zeppelins ( dirigible airships ) attack New York!
What an imagination, time travel, alien invasion, anti-gravity, genetic engineering, futuristic wars and invisibility!
 
KGeo777 said:
Interesting to see a reference to Tesla in First Men in the Moon.
I had not heard of Tesla until the 1990s.
Click to expand...

In the sequel animated movie War of the World Goliath . Nikola Tesla reverse engineered Martin Technology. :)
 
Ha Boom Food. The Society for the Preservation of Ancient Statures.

I don't think I have read Food of the Gods before--it sure it different from the movie I recall.
 
I like the ideas but something about FOOD OF THE GODS feels like a jumbled work compared to the earlier ones.

I think it is an interesting theme--about the effects of a technology on society and how some will embrace it enthusiastically (the Boom Food).
But it doesn't feel as complete in story as the earlier ones.
 
KGeo777 said:
There was some comedy to the parts where Cavor is sending messages to Earth and the narrator is challenging his version of event.
Food of the Gods is next. I don't think I have read that before.
Click to expand...

Food of the Gods . The book is way better than the movie.
 
In The Days of the Comet is so boring. Is it science fiction or a soap opera?
 
I need to read more Wells. I've only read War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr Moreau and The First Men in the Moon, and the story The Land Ironclads.
 
H G Well and and Orson ells met one another and were on a radio show together.

The 2002 Time Machine movie 2002 with Guy Pierce, was directed by Simon Wells who the grandson of H G Wells.

The 2002 film is the third adaptation of The Time Machine . In addition to the 1960 film by George Pal , there exists a 1978 TV movie staring John Beck . For a made for television film, It's not bad.
 
JunkMonkey said:
Definitely not a finite concern - and whether it exists more now than it did at any other time is debatable. You may feel threatened by some 'other' group of humans but not everyone does. How do you measure that kind of 'threat?' by possibly looking at the popular culture - or the culture that is popular - of the time. Sometimes the fear of invasion is more part of the zeitgeist and differently directed than at others. The 'enemy' changes. And the popularity of fiction dealing with it changes. Sometimes it's more sellable than others - whether by populist politicians or mass market paperback writers. In the 1950s, in America, it was 'Reds under the Bed' that were the threat. Joe McCarthy rode that pony as hard as he could and so did Hollywood as it churned out no end of thinly-disguised Alien (Commie!) Invasion films in which the invaders took over 'real' (ie White American) people and looked 'just like us' while sapping our vital bodily fluids.

Then the fuss died down, fashions changed, and we all got obsessed by some other threat to our collective psyche. (Next up: Nuclear War!) These days I would suggest the threat that is uppermost in the collective minds is not invasion from outside but from the entrenched power structures already in place. The unaccountable Multi-Billionaires and their politician puppets using 5G vaccine nano-technology to turn us all into drones. (Total bollocks but a LOT of people believe it.) That's the fear driving people at the moment. Michael Crichton fuelled fear of tech. People used to trust their own governments and scientists and mistrust other people's. Now they don't seem to trust their own either.

My (badly made) point was that Wells was riding a tide.
Click to expand...

Also, the current perceived threat of ‘invasion’ by immigrants.
 
It follows a biological impulse to some extent. It isn't just fear of invasion--it is about having a comfort zone. In Frankenstein, Shelley comments that someone can feel more happiness if they believe their hometown is the entire world rather than seeking to be greater than their nature will allow (which defies the current notion that equality is without any distinction or differences--imagine Shelley being told that a man can choose to be a woman just by willing it so). She also remarked that if North America had been colonized more slowly, it may have been less destructive. I was thinking earlier today that the migration to the New World was said to have been instigated by a desire for religious freedom--that is the story that is usually claimed as the motivation. If it was, then that means the migration to America was prompted by a clash over Christianity--and Christianity comes from the Middle East. So it was a clash that was created by multiculturalism that led to that migration.

Leonardo da Vinci had a passage in his work where he predicted the mass migration of animals from one continent to another and the destructive impact of that. I heard that in the US--there used to be forests where hundreds of thousands of frogs could be heard making sounds--historic reports suggest that it was an amazing thing to hear---and to think--by the official story, it's all gone because of adherence to religious documents that were not even native to the European continent.
Slavery and the migration it promoted was also defended as a multicultural good. James Boswell made that argument. He said it was an act of mercy to take Africans out of bondage in Africa and bring them to another society. And that is still used today to justify mass migration.

And the fear people have of vaccinations--this is so much like fears of poisoned wells in the Middle Ages--and you can see why that fear exists.
There is such hostility toward populism now in the centers of power in many countries.
 
In The Days of the Comet hit close to home on the last chapters and I appreciate the character focus more than I did at the beginning but I am glad it's done.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
B The Time Machine By Wells. What You Think Happened to the Time Traveler ? Book Discussion 8
B Who is Greater H G Wells or Jules Verne ? Classic SF&F 13
Bick William Dean Howells - The Rise of Silas Lapham, My Mark Twain, &c. Literary Fiction 9
phileas fogg China & H. G. Wells China Mieville 1
Werthead The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells Reviews & Interviews 49

Similar threads


Back
Top