Of his lesser known works, I recommend "Christina Alberta's Father," which is quite cute and heartwarming at times, but it's a really advanced critique about the mental health industry. You'll probably enjoy "War in the Air" as well. It was darker than I expected. Though not a novel, "The Red Room" was the first thing of his I read as a kid, perhaps one of the best horror stories ever. And I still maintain "The World Set Free" is one of the most over-the-top novels he ever wrote, the culmination of his utopian New World Order politics. Believe it or not, I haven't read "Dr. Moreau" yet, and I need to correct that. I have read "The Island of Captain Sparrow," which is kind of a knockoff by S. Fowler Wright, and that would be right up your alley too.
The War of the Worlds is still my favorite by Wells. Since you're a big fan of the Island of Dr. Moreau it would be interesting to know what you think the quasi-horror novel retelling The Daughter of Dr. Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
The Invisible Man from 1933 is a masterpiece!! I pity those who haven't seen the majesty of Claude Rains in that film, hahaha. I haven't actually read the story though, I need to get on that!
For me it's The Time Machine and The Invisible Man, but really all good. I'm currently going through the big green hardback of his short stories. Great stuff. 👍
Gotta say I read a few HGWells after being inspired to by one of your vids. I picked up a book of his short stories…so on a wet windy day…. Merry Xmas if you take a break. May 2024 be good to you.
Hey, Michael! I'm surprised those collections don't include "The Shape of Things to Come". I've never read the novel but the 1936 film version is a science fiction classic starring Raymond Massey! The story partly influenced Asimov's "Foundation" series and includes the first use of Common Era as time-reckoning rather than BC or AD!
Today I purchased The War of the Worlds and Other Science Fiction Classics. A lovely book. But what? Only 6 novels. No In the Days of the Comet! Drat. I got ripped off! Men Like Gods is, I think, another Wells SF novel. I had a first but sold it before I got to read it. Funny, those time travel dangers you discuss seem to have occurred in The Philadelphia Experiment - the real one, I don't mean just the movie. I recently read The Invisible Man. I read about 80% of it when I was a kind, and for some dumb reason, I didn't finish it. I picked up a new copy illustrated by one of my friends and I finally finished it. I thought it was a sort of hilarious SF slapstick comedy. Pretty funny. Glad I didn't see The Food of the Gods movie. Maybe I will enjoy the book I read maybe 95% of First Men then I stopped. Yes, I was a dumb kid. Gotta finish that one. Thanks for the great discussion.
It's somehow very appropriate that you're talking about an omnibus of H.G. Wells while holding up the book in your hand, while it's simultaneously on your bookshelf. Time travel is neat.
While searching for Agatha Christie and science fiction books, I stumbled on the 1978 Avenel Books edition of The Complete Science Fiction Treasury of H. G. Wells, which collects the same novels in your edition. The jacket art reminded me of "The Cloud Minders" episode of STAR TREK when I saw it. As soon as I finish a few other books I'm reading, I'll read H.G. Wells. All The Best, James Heath Lantz Freelance Writer Staff Writer for Back Issue magazine 2021 Eisner Award nominee, 2019 winner, "Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism"
Great video! I have a couple of H G Wells novels lined up for my 100 book challenge. I am particularly looking forward to War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man.
Very good video. H.G.Wells was a pessimist, so it's not surprising that many of his novels have a cautionary nature about them. I read a portion of War of the Worlds as a kid, but got into Wells' other novels later on. In the Days of the Comet was a better story of what happens to humanity when the earth passes through a comet. It's little-known today; showcases his utopian ideals. The Island of Dr. Moreau is still my favorite. He forsaw medical transplants & genetic engineering. Hey, thanks for posting! 🤠📚
War of the World is one of my all time favorite novels. Re Time travel. Would really suck if you appeared at a time when your location is a sea bottom. Glub glub.
Is it sad that the first adaptation of The Time Machine that I think of is the Wishbone version? You know the kids show with the dog that dressed up in costumes and acted out classic literature stories lol. I loved that show. I read The Invisible Man when I was a kid and enjoyed it. I need to read some of his other major works. If I get that Kindle for Christmas I'll have to key some of it up on that.
I’ve read the first four books from that omnibus. The War of the Worlds was terrifying 🫣 I’m keen to reread a couple of those books as well as read a few as yet unread Wells in future 🚀
If you travel back in time to the same location, you'll end up in space. In fact, travel thousands of years back, and you will not even end up in our solar system.
Not necessarily, though. It depends on the time machine’s frame of reference. Dad worked on Jet Propulsion Labs’ ranging systems, and I first heard about linear algebra from him talking about what they do to set and track spacecrafts’ courses. To vastly simplify, they shift reference frames when something like a nearby planet is the dominant gravitational consideration, then to others for interplanetary space where the Sun dominates, and so on. The Time Machine might very well move in a spacetime continuum defined in Earth-centered terms. Then it stays at the same latitude and longitude. You could probably fold in both elevation changes and avoiding things you’d rather not materialize inside of with some reference to nearest equivalent gravitational, electromagnetic, and other potential. Now if the frame of reference is based on the Sun, the center of mass for the solar system as a whole, or some such, then you’re hosed unless the time machine can also do the spacetime transformations necessary to hit the equivalent point in the new time. Even worse if the frame is anchored on the galaxy as a whole, the cosmic microwave background, or some such. But it’s not mandatory. Yours for ever-ascending heights of hand waving :)
I hate to admit it, but The Food of the Gods is the only one of H G Wells' novels that I ever read. I read it because I was amazed at how bad the 1976 movie was, even though it starred Marjoe Gortner! I was pleasantly surprised by the novel.
Unpredictable landing zones, what a horror. What if you're in your garden. Just as you plunge your pitchfork deep into the innocent earth a time-traveler materializes at the point of your pitchfork tines, his screams alerting the neighbors and summoning police. And what if the time-traveler had been in your future at a time you got framed for robbing a bank? Impaled on the pitchfork is the dead time-traveler's cell phone containing all the exculpatory evidence you'd need to save yourself from a death sentence, the data destroyed and irrecoverable. Ever since reading The Time Machine I've never felt gardening was without risk.
Giant chickens! The Food of the Gods (the movie) is part of a double-feature Blu-ray from Shout! featuring the great, sorely unsung Frogs featuring Ray Milland and a very young Sam Elliott. One of my all-time cheesy faves.
Talking of film adaptations, have you seen Island of Lost Souls (1932) starring Charles Laughton as Moreau, Bela Lugosi (mr Dracula himself) as the 'Sayer of the Law', one of Moreau's creations, and Kathleen Burke as Lota, the Panther Woman (ditto). It's a great film, well worth hunting down on DVD. The odd thing about it though is, after all the horror, death and destruction, the credits play out with a jaunty little jazz number - I've never seen or heard anything like it! My own exposure to Wells was through his short stories. My aunt had a volume of his collected stories and I remember reading them avidly. The young Terry was particularly attracted to 'The Flowering of the Strange Orchid', and 'Empire of the Ants' - I'm not sure what that says about my young self.
Fancy that, I didn’t realize that all seven of these were published in one volume. I’ve only read three of them separately: Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and Moreau, and all three are great but Time Machine is my favorite and I’ve read it at least twice. I have the Delphi edition of his complete works so I suppose there’s no excuse for not reading more of Wells, it’s mind boggling how much he wrote including short stories. Just this year I read Country of the Blind, a fantastic story.
They aired The Invisible Man (1933) on the LEGEND channel a number of months ago and I was very happy to see it again (about a month later they aired the sequel with Vincent Price, which was oddly pretty good too). Claude Raines, playing mad perfectly, has that fantastic line: “Even the Moon’s frightened of me!” The poetry of the deranged. Never forget that.
I bought a B. Dalton special edition .... probably when they were going out of business...... for like $3. It has six of the stories lacking In The Days of the Comet.
Yes, lol that’s the thing with time travel. I read an old American comic where a time traveling man ended up in a public ladies toilet in a train station or so. That was a fun story. I think it was in weird science comic or something.
I’m probably due for a reread on the Time Machine, and still need to watch the original movie. Didn’t know these 7 were often collected like this. I have really old vintage paperbacks of a few of these that I have yet to read (Food of the Gods, in the Days of the Comet, and now… First Men in the Moon). I also have old hardback of another… forget the name… that wasn’t science fiction.
I’ve been wanting to read The Time Machine and Doctor Moreau. Other than that I don’t know that he’s a priority author for me lol. Great video Michael!
I think I prefer individual copies, not so heavy and there's individual cover art for each. Still haven't found _in the Days of the Comet_ or _the Food of the Gods,_ or the _Shape of Things to Come_ or volume one of the Outline of History (volume 2 looks interesting though).
I love H. G. Wells, but most of his stuff is almost plotless. He sets up a situation and then just chronicles a whole bunch of attacks until the book's long enough and then he ends it. Martians show up, there's a ton of reports of destruction, then the end. A guy learns how to become invisible, he runs around attacking people, then the end. Dr. Moreau makes monster-men, they go on the attack, the end. The time traveler gets to a future run by monsters, they attack a lot, the end. They find a substance that makes things grow to super-size, they create a bunch of mayhem, the end... I like him anyway, but he wasn't a real "plot" kinda guy. It was all slam-bang sandbox playing on paper.
In Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ the moon is hollowed out by men who live in caves. H. G. Wells' short story, _The Country of the Blind_ is interesting.
My sister had that book! In a '70s slipcover having nothing, as you say, to do with any story in the book. I've read five, avoid Food of the God's and In the Days of the Comet out of fear that they will be boring -- I don't know why I would think that, it's H.G. Wells!
There is a 1940s BBC TV adaptation of THE TIME MACHINE. HG Wells wrote a hundred books, and most of them are unreadable! This first raft of books are good page-turners, but unfortunately he decided to become a "serious" author, and since then he never re-captured that original quality. A MODERN UTOPIA is the weakest SF you'll ever read. MEN LIKE GODS is really weak and anaemic. THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME is a rambling mess, but a good science fiction movie came out of it. THE STAR BEGOTTEN is a little bit like THE MIDWICH COCOS, but is really WOE-BEGOTTEN. THE WORLD SET FREE has this typical Wellsian trope of civilization is practically destroyed, but everyone wakes up one day and comes to their senses and simultaneously decide that it's obvious that there has to be a socialist world state. The movie adaptation of THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTS has Joan Collins and is really funny.
Of his lesser known works, I recommend "Christina Alberta's Father," which is quite cute and heartwarming at times, but it's a really advanced critique about the mental health industry. You'll probably enjoy "War in the Air" as well. It was darker than I expected. Though not a novel, "The Red Room" was the first thing of his I read as a kid, perhaps one of the best horror stories ever. And I still maintain "The World Set Free" is one of the most over-the-top novels he ever wrote, the culmination of his utopian New World Order politics. Believe it or not, I haven't read "Dr. Moreau" yet, and I need to correct that. I have read "The Island of Captain Sparrow," which is kind of a knockoff by S. Fowler Wright, and that would be right up your alley too.
A great video. Thanks from Iraq
The War of the Worlds is still my favorite by Wells. Since you're a big fan of the Island of Dr. Moreau it would be interesting to know what you think the quasi-horror novel retelling The Daughter of Dr. Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
The Invisible Man from 1933 is a masterpiece!! I pity those who haven't seen the majesty of Claude Rains in that film, hahaha. I haven't actually read the story though, I need to get on that!
Claude Rains is fantastic in that movie.
For me it's The Time Machine and The Invisible Man, but really all good. I'm currently going through the big green hardback of his short stories. Great stuff. 👍
Really like The War of the Worlds, LOVE The Invisible Man. It's outstanding, as is the 30s film. Great video, as ever.
Gotta say I read a few HGWells after being inspired to by one of your vids. I picked up a book of his short stories…so on a wet windy day…. Merry Xmas if you take a break. May 2024 be good to you.
Hey, Michael! I'm surprised those collections don't include "The Shape of Things to Come". I've never read the novel but the 1936 film version is a science fiction classic starring Raymond Massey! The story partly influenced Asimov's "Foundation" series and includes the first use of Common Era as time-reckoning rather than BC or AD!
It could be because it was such a late book. If I’m remembering correctly it came out in 1933 and was long for a Wells SF book.
Today I purchased The War of the Worlds and Other Science Fiction Classics. A lovely book. But what? Only 6 novels. No In the Days of the Comet! Drat. I got ripped off!
Men Like Gods is, I think, another Wells SF novel. I had a first but sold it before I got to read it.
Funny, those time travel dangers you discuss seem to have occurred in The Philadelphia Experiment - the real one, I don't mean just the movie.
I recently read The Invisible Man. I read about 80% of it when I was a kind, and for some dumb reason, I didn't finish it. I picked up a new copy illustrated by one of my friends and I finally finished it. I thought it was a sort of hilarious SF slapstick comedy. Pretty funny.
Glad I didn't see The Food of the Gods movie. Maybe I will enjoy the book
I read maybe 95% of First Men then I stopped. Yes, I was a dumb kid. Gotta finish that one.
Thanks for the great discussion.
It's somehow very appropriate that you're talking about an omnibus of H.G. Wells while holding up the book in your hand, while it's simultaneously on your bookshelf. Time travel is neat.
That Dover edition is very… well loved 😄
While searching for Agatha Christie and science fiction books, I stumbled on the 1978 Avenel Books edition of The Complete Science Fiction Treasury of H. G. Wells, which collects the same novels in your edition. The jacket art reminded me of "The Cloud Minders" episode of STAR TREK when I saw it. As soon as I finish a few other books I'm reading, I'll read H.G. Wells.
All The Best,
James Heath Lantz
Freelance Writer
Staff Writer for Back Issue magazine
2021 Eisner Award nominee, 2019 winner, "Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism"
Great video! I have a couple of H G Wells novels lined up for my 100 book challenge. I am particularly looking forward to War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man.
I think you will really enjoy both of these.
Very good video. H.G.Wells was a pessimist, so it's not surprising that many of his novels have a cautionary nature about them. I read a portion of War of the Worlds as a kid, but got into Wells' other novels later on. In the Days of the Comet was a better story of what happens to humanity when the earth passes through a comet. It's little-known today; showcases his utopian ideals. The Island of Dr. Moreau is still my favorite. He forsaw medical transplants & genetic engineering.
Hey, thanks for posting! 🤠📚
War of the World is one of my all time favorite novels. Re Time travel. Would really suck if you appeared at a time when your location is a sea bottom. Glub glub.
That would suck, indeed.
Is it sad that the first adaptation of The Time Machine that I think of is the Wishbone version? You know the kids show with the dog that dressed up in costumes and acted out classic literature stories lol. I loved that show. I read The Invisible Man when I was a kid and enjoyed it. I need to read some of his other major works. If I get that Kindle for Christmas I'll have to key some of it up on that.
I was really expecting to see The Shape of Things to Come in this collection.
I’ve read the first four books from that omnibus. The War of the Worlds was terrifying 🫣 I’m keen to reread a couple of those books as well as read a few as yet unread Wells in future 🚀
If you travel back in time to the same location, you'll end up in space. In fact, travel thousands of years back, and you will not even end up in our solar system.
That’s true! I didn’t even think of that!
That's SO true & you're the first person I've heard mention it. Bravo
Not necessarily, though. It depends on the time machine’s frame of reference. Dad worked on Jet Propulsion Labs’ ranging systems, and I first heard about linear algebra from him talking about what they do to set and track spacecrafts’ courses. To vastly simplify, they shift reference frames when something like a nearby planet is the dominant gravitational consideration, then to others for interplanetary space where the Sun dominates, and so on.
The Time Machine might very well move in a spacetime continuum defined in Earth-centered terms. Then it stays at the same latitude and longitude. You could probably fold in both elevation changes and avoiding things you’d rather not materialize inside of with some reference to nearest equivalent gravitational, electromagnetic, and other potential.
Now if the frame of reference is based on the Sun, the center of mass for the solar system as a whole, or some such, then you’re hosed unless the time machine can also do the spacetime transformations necessary to hit the equivalent point in the new time. Even worse if the frame is anchored on the galaxy as a whole, the cosmic microwave background, or some such. But it’s not mandatory.
Yours for ever-ascending heights of hand waving :)
@@GentleReader01Yeah ok 👌🏻
Clark Ashton Smith wrote a story were that happens! It was fun
I hate to admit it, but The Food of the Gods is the only one of H G Wells' novels that I ever read. I read it because I was amazed at how bad the 1976 movie was, even though it starred Marjoe Gortner! I was pleasantly surprised by the novel.
Unpredictable landing zones, what a horror.
What if you're in your garden. Just as you plunge your pitchfork deep into the innocent earth a time-traveler materializes at the point of your pitchfork tines, his screams alerting the neighbors and summoning police. And what if the time-traveler had been in your future at a time you got framed for robbing a bank? Impaled on the pitchfork is the dead time-traveler's cell phone containing all the exculpatory evidence you'd need to save yourself from a death sentence, the data destroyed and irrecoverable.
Ever since reading The Time Machine I've never felt gardening was without risk.
My volume has six, and I still need to read two of them! I should do that soon!
Giant chickens! The Food of the Gods (the movie) is part of a double-feature Blu-ray from Shout! featuring the great, sorely unsung Frogs featuring Ray Milland and a very young Sam Elliott. One of my all-time cheesy faves.
Frogs 🐸!
The space ships on the cover image of the HG Wells look like pierogi!! 😂
Pinole Valley High School Library is still waiting on those late fees. You best bring that back immediately.
😩
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Talking of film adaptations, have you seen Island of Lost Souls (1932) starring Charles Laughton as Moreau, Bela Lugosi (mr Dracula himself) as the 'Sayer of the Law', one of Moreau's creations, and Kathleen Burke as Lota, the Panther Woman (ditto). It's a great film, well worth hunting down on DVD. The odd thing about it though is, after all the horror, death and destruction, the credits play out with a jaunty little jazz number - I've never seen or heard anything like it!
My own exposure to Wells was through his short stories. My aunt had a volume of his collected stories and I remember reading them avidly. The young Terry was particularly attracted to 'The Flowering of the Strange Orchid', and 'Empire of the Ants' - I'm not sure what that says about my young self.
Island of Lost Souls is great.
Fancy that, I didn’t realize that all seven of these were published in one volume. I’ve only read three of them separately: Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and Moreau, and all three are great but Time Machine is my favorite and I’ve read it at least twice. I have the Delphi edition of his complete works so I suppose there’s no excuse for not reading more of Wells, it’s mind boggling how much he wrote including short stories. Just this year I read Country of the Blind, a fantastic story.
They aired The Invisible Man (1933) on the LEGEND channel a number of months ago and I was very happy to see it again (about a month later they aired the sequel with Vincent Price, which was oddly pretty good too).
Claude Raines, playing mad perfectly, has that fantastic line: “Even the Moon’s frightened of me!” The poetry of the deranged. Never forget that.
Cant comment on the historical accuracy (dont know enough) but his "Outline of History" is always an enjoyable read for me.
I bought a B. Dalton special edition .... probably when they were going out of business...... for like $3. It has six of the stories lacking In The Days of the Comet.
Next year we could do Winter of Wells.
The war in the air :D
Yes, lol that’s the thing with time travel. I read an old American comic where a time traveling man ended up in a public ladies toilet in a train station or so. That was a fun story. I think it was in weird science comic or something.
I’m probably due for a reread on the Time Machine, and still need to watch the original movie. Didn’t know these 7 were often collected like this. I have really old vintage paperbacks of a few of these that I have yet to read (Food of the Gods, in the Days of the Comet, and now… First Men in the Moon). I also have old hardback of another… forget the name… that wasn’t science fiction.
That movie was really good.
I’ve been wanting to read The Time Machine and Doctor Moreau. Other than that I don’t know that he’s a priority author for me lol. Great video Michael!
Ahh…Wells. 🎩
I think I prefer individual copies, not so heavy and there's individual cover art for each.
Still haven't found _in the Days of the Comet_ or _the Food of the Gods,_ or the _Shape of Things to Come_ or volume one of the Outline of History (volume 2 looks interesting though).
Bring a towel!
Always know where your towel is.
I love H. G. Wells, but most of his stuff is almost plotless. He sets up a situation and then just chronicles a whole bunch of attacks until the book's long enough and then he ends it. Martians show up, there's a ton of reports of destruction, then the end. A guy learns how to become invisible, he runs around attacking people, then the end. Dr. Moreau makes monster-men, they go on the attack, the end. The time traveler gets to a future run by monsters, they attack a lot, the end. They find a substance that makes things grow to super-size, they create a bunch of mayhem, the end...
I like him anyway, but he wasn't a real "plot" kinda guy. It was all slam-bang sandbox playing on paper.
You got some late fees coming 😂
In Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ the moon is hollowed out by men who live in caves.
H. G. Wells' short story, _The Country of the Blind_ is interesting.
My sister had that book! In a '70s slipcover having nothing, as you say, to do with any story in the book.
I've read five, avoid Food of the God's and In the Days of the Comet out of fear that they will be boring -- I don't know why I would think that, it's H.G. Wells!
There is a 1940s BBC TV adaptation of THE TIME MACHINE.
HG Wells wrote a hundred books, and most of them are unreadable! This first raft of books are good page-turners, but unfortunately he decided to become a "serious" author, and since then he never re-captured that original quality. A MODERN UTOPIA is the weakest SF you'll ever read. MEN LIKE GODS is really weak and anaemic. THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME is a rambling mess, but a good science fiction movie came out of it. THE STAR BEGOTTEN is a little bit like THE MIDWICH COCOS, but is really WOE-BEGOTTEN.
THE WORLD SET FREE has this typical Wellsian trope of civilization is practically destroyed, but everyone wakes up one day and comes to their senses and simultaneously decide that it's obvious that there has to be a socialist world state.
The movie adaptation of THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTS has Joan Collins and is really funny.
Midwich Cuckoos was written by John Wyndham in 1957.
I didn’t know about that 1940s version of The Time Machine. Thanks!
It doesn't have The World Set Free which inspired the Atomic Bomb.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Set_Free
Maybe Putin should read that.