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01/16/2008: "The Books of H. G. Wells"
If you have never read an H. G. Wells novel, you are missing well-written, and very educated writing. Although he wrote his two classics – The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine - over one hundred years ago, he had an excellent working knowledge of the world around him, and had a vision of the future based upon the science of the day. I can’t say that any of us could write a better future with what we know about science today.
I found War of the Worlds to be tough to read because of his distinctly Nineteenth Century British prose and references. Apparently, reading was not for the faint of heart back then. Nevertheless, the story was easy to follow. He kept a narrative focus on himself and his brother, which added to the ease of reading.
As is my habit after finishing a science fiction novel, I went to Wikipedia.com to look up info on The War of the Worlds. I like to see any trivia or analysis or points I may have missed. I take my reading more seriously than I used to.
The Wikipedia entry lists several unresolved issues that Wells leaves to the imagination of the reader.
-- The narrator hears heavy gunfire while imprisoned, but no explanation is given as to what it was: man or Martian.
-- The narrator’s brother sees a sea battle between man and Martian as he escapes across the English Channel to France. The fate of the third Martian fighting machine is not given as the battle slips out of sight.
-- Although we know that the narrator’s brother survived – he obviously lived and told his two chapters of tales to the narrator – what happens to him after the escape from England is a mystery.
-- Ten ships left Mars, but the narrator tells us only of seven that land on Earth. We can probably assume that the other three land, but only after his long imprisonment.
-- We have no idea what the narrator’s name is. Or his brother’s name, for that matter. We see a similar trend in The Time Machine
-- Do the Martians communicate verbally or via telepathy? There is evidence to support both methods, but even an autopsy gives no final definitive evidence.
-- An object flies over the London sky, and we know it to be the Martian’s creation. Nothing more is mentioned about it. We know nothing about its use or fate.
I believe that good literature does leave a few dangling mysteries at the end. The main problem needs to be resolved – for example, the humans defeat the Martians – but we are forced to use our imagination a bit to figure out some of the rest. Our narrator did not address every single last detail in his story, and it gives us a sense of realism as well. When telling extremely long stories, do you include every single detail? Science fiction is about stretching the imagination, and problem-solving. What better way to stretch our imaginations than by making us solve a few of the problems ourselves?
That’s why Star Wars was so great when it came out: there were un-resolved details. What were the Clone Wars? What was The Empire, and how did Darth Vader wind up in a walking life support system?
Sometimes the absence of details takes our attention away from the things that just do not matter. How do FTL (faster-than-light) drives on the Battlestar Galactica work? And for that matter, they can jump across space instantaneously, but Admiral Adama needs to wear glasses? We have no clue why these things are why they are, and that allows the characters and plot to take center stage, not the science. Science as center stage works well in most cases on Star Trek, but it would ruin Galactica.
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I found The Time Machine is an easier read. There are not nearly as many uniquely British references to culture and geography as the War novel. After all, he spends most of the narrative 800,000 years in the future, and it’s new to all of us. The plot of the story is deceptively simple, and his narrative is straightforward.
Wells does a masterful job of interweaving science and sociology, and indirectly justifies why he created the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks. It makes sense how he put humans out of business.
I enjoy reading older science fiction because of the quaintness of the author’s vision; it’s just simpler. If you read Asimov’s Foundation novels from the 1940’s, he writes of a world ten or twenty thousand years in the future that has space travel, but no Internet or Facebook . . . or even computers!
Chapter 14’s vision of the future of humanity is the single most chilling narrative I have ever read. After escaping from the Morlocks, the Time Traveler runs six hundred million years in the future, and finds that Man is quite . . . irrelevant. I have read a small number of novels describing the ultra-future (millions of years) of Mankind and the Universe, and none are better than what Wells put together. Remember, he wrote over one hundred years ago, and the simplicity of his vision makes it easy to imagine. The Time Traveler only spends a few brief moments in his ultra-future stops, so we are just given a snapshot of a dying Earth . . . again, just enough to send the imagination flying.