H.G. Wells: Maker and Destroyer of Worlds

When I was a kid, my FOURTH favorite movie (after The Wizard of Oz,The Poseidon Adventure and The Ten Commandments, in that order) was surely the 1953 George Pal version of H.G. Wells’The War of the Worlds. 

I clearly had a taste for apocalypse: my favorite movies ll featured things like tornadoes, tidal waves, plagues, and the end of the world. Another favorite movie, Chaplin’s The Gold Rush has blizzards and avalanches, but I only saw that one once during my childhood. The other movies I got to see many times on television. Gone with the Wind, with the burning of Atlanta, also made a big impression. I clearly also had a liking for Technicolor! Still do! At any rate, The War of the Worlds was only 20 years old when I discovered it as a kid, though it seemed ancient. There were so many memorable takeaways both, visual and aural — an apocalypse both terrifying and gorgeous. The sound of the death rays makes a lasting impression. The slow progress of the hovering extermination craft. That moment where the martian’s dying hand emerges reminds one of the freaky witch’s feet from The Wizard of Oz. Spielberg’s 2005 remake has its good points but it is but a pale shadow beside this movie.

At any rate, The Warof the Worlds was undoubtedly my entree into the work of H.G. Wells (1866-1946), whose birthday it is today.

One of the things to celebrate about Wells is that his writing is clear and accessible enough that a child can not only appreciate it, but enjoy it. But it is also expressive enough and wise enough and so well crafted that (unlike, say, other childhood favorites like Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs) that one can read and re-read him throughout adulthood with undiminished delight. Furthermore (unlike those other two authors) one reads Wells’ books with just as much enjoyment as one gets from watching the movie versions.

He must be one of the most adapted-for-cinema authors of all time. By childhood I was already familiar with both the book and movie versions of War of the Worlds, The Time Machine (1960),The First Men in the Moon (1964), The Invisible Man (1933),The Island of Dr. Moreau (1932, 1977 and later 1996) ,The Food of the Gods (1976) and The Empire of the Ants (1977), (Well, they can’t all be cinematic gems.)

In the fifth grade I was first exposed to Orson Welles’ notorious 1938 radio version of War of the Worlds. Our teacher played a record album of the broadcast. I think she was prompted by the 1975 tv movie about the event The Night That Panicked America, which had sparked our interest.The kids quickly grew bored however and the teacher, disgusted at our restlessness, took the record off the turntable.

As an adult, I discovered some more obscure works by Wells.

One was the 1936 film Things to Come with Raymond Massey,Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke, etc. Wells wrote the screenplay, based on his 1933 novel. It is a rare, late work of science fiction by Wells, produced decades after he had mostly abandoned the genre. In the story, he accurately predicts the advent of World War Two, accurate to within a few months. In his version it starts in 1940. However, in his version, it lasts until the 1970s. Most of the world is reduced to rubble, but is brought back from the ashes by a handful of scientists who build a utopia and send a rocket to the moon.

This theme of the battle between barbarism and civilization is also the throughline of another major book of Wells I stumbled upon later in life, his three volume Outline of World History (originally published in 1920, and updated many times thereafter). Even with the updates, the book contains much that is factually and attitudinally out of date. With his socialist perspective, Wells was much gentler on the Soviet Union than any one has any right to be. And though Wells was the furthest thing from a racist as it was possible for a white man to be in his day, the book is somewhat more Eurocentric than we’re accustomed to nowadays. Still, the mix of his scientific orientation (like Herbert Spencer, he begins at the beginning — prehistory), with a strong authorial voice one isn’t accustomed to getting from a historian (the man has strong opinions) makes it a rewarding read. Plus the book is full of excellent maps. I’ve found myself referring back to it again and again over the years, as obsolete as it is. His overarching thesis, that the history of civilization is one of constant strife between marauding nomads and settled agriculturalists, is convincing. One can even project it onto War of the Worlds. 

Another interesting book by Wells that’s off the beaten track is his 1909 novel Tono-Bungay. In its day it was considered the most artistically ambitious of his novels and caused some critics to compare him to Dickens and Tolstoy. The subject of the book is near and dear to my heart and I’ve toyed with trying to adapt it in some fashion. It concerns a young man who is hooked into marketing his uncle’s patent medicine, the titular “Tono-Bungay” and later gets involved in flying in hot air balloons. The novel is said to be semi-autobiographical, but I’ll venture that that aspect of the book has more to do with the main character’s growing disillusionment and skepticism than any snake oil or aeronautics Wells was involved with.

Wells wrote dozens of books beyond these, by the way, both fiction and non-fiction. He died in 1946, long enough to experience both the famous radio scare and the Second World War he prophesied, not long enough to see that wonderful 1953 adaptation. As an atheist, I suspect he may not have relished its very 1950s religious overtones. But those images of smashed and wrecked cathedrals do evoke WWII and enhance the power of the movie. How appropriate that Wells’ birthday happens to fall on the United Nations’ International Day of Peace.