All reviews copyright 1984-2022 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THE CROQUET PLAYER by H. G. Wells:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/26/2016]
THE CROQUET PLAYER by H. G. Wells (ISBN 978-0-803-29842-2) is atypical Wells, more in the style of M. R. James, or even Henry James, if one thinks of THE TURN OF THE SCREW. It is Wells's attempt to write an atmospheric ghost story, but whether one thinks it a successful attempt is a matter of taste. It is difficult, after all, to abandon a writing style that has been honed on the rational in order to convey the irrational. The comparison to Henry James seems apt, since Wells and James were in a dispute over whether it was better to write about events in the physical world, or psychological states in the mental world. Henry James was the brother of philosopher William James, who wrote THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, so perhaps his bent towards internal states ran in the family.
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON by H. G. Wells:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/30/2019]
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON by H. G. Wells (ISBN 978-0-486-43978-5 in a Dover Thrift edition boxed set), along with the movie based on it, was the August selection for our book-and-movie group. I thought that a lot of the description of the Selenite society was based on Plato's Republic, with strong stratification of society, and everyone trained for the tasks they are destined for. A more modern example would be Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD, with its Alphas, Betas, and so on, cultivated since before birth for their fixed place in society. THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, of course, predates BRAVE NEW WORLD by thirty years, but I suspect Huxley was more influenced by Plato than by Wells.
Oddly, though Bedford is horrified by the pragmatic, utilitarian Selenites, he also displays a strong sense of class when he just shrugs off the (presumed) death of the boy in Littlestone who accidentally launches himself into space in the sphere. Bedford is far more concerned about the loss of the sphere (and the Cavorite) than the death of the boy, and says:
"It was fairly evident that he would gravitate with my bales to somewhere near the middle of the sphere and remain there, and so cease to be a legitimate terrestrial interest, however remarkable he might seem to the inhabitants of some remote quarter of space. I very speedily convinced myself on that point. And as for any responsibility I might have in the matter, the more I reflected upon that, the clearer it became that if only I kept quiet about things, I need not trouble myself about that. If I was faced by sorrowing parents demanding their lost boy, I had merely to demand my lost sphere--or ask them what they meant. At first I had a vision of weeping parents and guardians and all sorts of complications, but now I saw that I simply had to keep my mouth shut, and nothing in that way could arise."
One is reminded of the famous exchange in THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN:
[Huck:] "We blowed out a cylinder-head."
[Aunt Sally:] "Good gracious! anybody hurt?"
[Huck:] "No'm. Killed a n****r."
[Aunt Sally:] "Well, it's lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt."
The film kept a fair amount of the novel, even including such details as the blue river, though it eliminated most of the information about Selenite society, as well as most of the wild variations in their phenotypes. However, it felt obliged to make some concessions to then-current scientific knowledge, and so could not give the lunar surface an atmosphere, even during the day. So Cavor and Bedford wear "spacesuits"--really just diving suits with no pressurization and no gloves! The film also added it a smidge of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, and a dash of THE TIME MACHINE, not surprising given that both those movies had been very popular in their time.
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON is one of the novels included in the canonical collections of Wells's novels, along with FOOD OF THE GODS, IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET, THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, THE TIME MACHINE, and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. (Cut-rate collections often omit IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. Dover Thrift editions has a boxed set of five, dropping THE FOOD OF THE GODS as well.) All of these hold up remarkably well.
THE FOOD OF THE GODS AND HOW IT CAME TO EARTH by H. G. Wells:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/12/21]
THE FOOD OF THE GODS AND HOW IT CAME TO EARTH by H. G. Wells (many different publishers, as well as Project Gutenberg) was our bi-monthly book discussion choice.
One thing that struck me was that THE FOOD OF THE GODS has more sarcasm/irony than most of Wells's better-known science fiction works. This is in addition to the Skinners (particularly Mr. Skinner and his heavy lisp). It was indeed a great relief when Skinner and his lisp vanish from the narrative.
There also doesn't seem to be much consideration of how much more of a strain on Earth's resources a race of giants would be. I guess back when Wells was writing, Earth's resources seemed infinite, much as the bison to the first white people to cross the plains and the whales did to Melville. Melville wrote, "Though so short a period ago--not a good lifetime--the census of the buffalo in Illinois exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present day not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region; and though the cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of man; yet the far different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting the Sperm Whales for forty-eight months think they have done extremely well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the West, when the far west (in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same number of moccasined men, for the same number of months, mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be statistically stated."
For years, Dover Books used to have a hardback edition of SEVEN SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS OF H. G. WELLS, which included THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE TIME MACHINE, THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, THE FOOD OF THE GODS, and IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. Later there appeared SIX SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS OF H. G. WELLS from Canterbury Classics (and possibly others), dropping IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. Now Dover has a boxed edition of six Thrift Editions, having dropped IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET and THE FOOD OF GODS and added a volume of short stories. I predict the next to go will be THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON.
ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU by H. G. Wells:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/22/2010]
I recently watched ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (based on ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU by H. G. Wells). One thing that struck me was its similarity in at least one regard to A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. How, you may well ask. Well, in ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, Laughton is basically a god to his creations, and he has provided them with "The Law":
Not to eat meat, that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to go on all fours, that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to spill blood, that is the Law. Are we not Men?
When Laughton/"God" tells Ouran to kill Captain Donahue, he says that the Law does not apply this time. But Ouran and others take this, and extend it, and decide that the Law no longer applies at all.
Now, in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, Thomas More asks Will Roper, "[Would you] cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?" Roper replies that he would "cut down every law in England to do that." And More says, "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide .., the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast ..., and if you cut them down ... do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake."
And there are still plenty of examples in real life where people have decided that the laws--divine or man-made--do not apply in their special case. ("I'm saying that when the President does it, it is not illegal.")
Is all this in Wells's novel? Not in this form. The Law there is:
Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
But Moreau makes the same mistake. He shows one of the creatures, his servant, how to skin and cook a rabbit, and that is how they taste blood. But there is more the implication of the creatures being overcome by their animal nature than by having the Law explicitly nullified by Moreau.
THINGS TO COME by H. G. Wells:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/25/2007]
We recently watched THINGS TO COME, based on the novel and screen treatment by H. G. Wells. The miniature of Everytown at the beginning is really marvelous, even though it is only on screen for a few seconds. It incorporates aspects of many British towns (e.g., St. Paul's from London, Arthur's Seat from Edinburgh [I think]) to create something that was truly "Everytown". And there are other touches: all the children's Christmas gifts at the beginning are martial. The Boss is obviously intended to be a negative character in a fascist mold; he dresses like Mussolini and says things like, "You are warriors. You have been taught not to think, but to do--and--if, need be, die. I salute you--I, your leader." But the technocracy Wings over the World brings does not look much better to our eyes. They show up in Everytown, announce that they are taking control, and say things like, "Now we have to put the world in order," and "first, the round-up of brigands." (Interestingly, Wells has them "settle, organize, and advance" first, then round up the brigands, while the film has the brigands rounded up first.)
And what do they do? Well, Cabal announces, "We shall excavate the eternal hills," and then we see massive strip-mining operations and huge factories, apparently fairly polluted, since all the workers are wearing full body suits and helmets. When Theotocopulos cries, "Stop this progress before it is too late!" we are likely to agree at least somewhat with him. (And how do Theotocopulos and Cabal project their voices in their debate across about a half-mile of distance without any microphones or speakers?) In spite of all this, this is a film that cries out for a good restoration--I wonder why no one has done one?
THE TIME MACHINE by H. G. Wells:
With H. G. Wells's THE TIME MACHINE, it's possible that the George Pal film is as good as the book, though very different in tone. (I haven't seen the new version, but rumor has it that it comes in a poor third.) And if the length of the previous two books is daunting, this is perfect. (By Hugo standards, it is actually a novella rather than a novel, being about 32,500 words.)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]
And there was H. G. Wells's THE TIME MACHINE, read for my library's science fiction reading group. I can't recall if I had noted before that it appears that Wells originated the idea that the elite would live on the surface and the workers underground, and then Fritz Lang made this visual in METROPOLIS.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/11/22]
Our science fiction discussion group chose THE TIME MACHINE by H. G. Wells (available in more editions than you could shake a stick at). This is obviously not the first time I have read this, but I can still notice new things in it.
The Time Traveler (from hence forth to be known as TTT) says he was in the future for eight days, then later talks about a fruit being "in season all the time [he] was there." Unlike the Mariphasa Lupina Lumina, most fruits stay in season more than eight days.
The future is not totally idyllic: TTT says when he arrived, "A pitiless hail was hissing round me..."
One runs across the question, "What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful?" These characteristics re-appear in the Martians in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.
Wells has TTT initially see the world of the future as the triumph of communism. (Reminder: THE TIME MACHINE was written in 1895, a full decade before even the 1905 Russian Revolution, and over two decades before the 1917 Revolution.) And one result is the blurring of boundaries: "... or the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force..." Also, "strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness." The TTT points out the benefits of selective breeding in plants and animals, and assumes that selective breeding has been used on humans--which of course is true, though not in the way TTT thinks, and not with the "happy" results he at first perceives.
Eventually he discovers the truth and also concludes that the Eloi are not even human any more. Speaking of Weena, he says, "She always seemed to me, I fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because he affection was so human." This is how some people talk about their dogs. And of the Morlocks he says, "... it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things."
Our group spent a lot of time discussing why Wells included the sequence with the crabs and whether they liked it. One person mentioned that another discussion group he was in read THE TIME MACHINE in conjunction with "Homefaring" by Robert Silverberg and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot.
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by H. G. Wells:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/01/2005]
H. G. Wells's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (ISBN 0-812-50515-8) was this month's selection for our science fiction discussion. Rather than rehash what has been said a zillion times, I'll note two things. First, even H. G. Wells can write an ungrammatical sentence: "No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible and improbable." What is obviously meant is "No one gave a thought ..., [or if they did, they] thought of them only...."
Second (and I know I'm being to sound like a broken record), some of Wells's more bigoted comments have been bowdlerized in later versions. In chapter 16, "The Exodus from London", the original describes the scene after the bag of coins breaks as, "The Jew stopped and looked at the heap," and later says that the brother was "clutching the Jew's collar with his free hand." In later editions, the man (who has been described as "a bearded, eagle-faced man", is referred to only as "the man." And the "Jewess" in chapter 22 disappeared in a major re-write of everything after the death of the curate. (I believe that this rewrite was the conversion of the original magazine publication to book form.)
One line which appeared almost verbatim in Jeff Wayne's musical version was "'The chances of anything man-like on Mars are a million to one,' he said." Wayne changed it to "'The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one,' he said." Timothy Hines keeps it precisely verbatim in his direct-to-DVD three-hour H. G. WELLS' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. (Steven Spielberg never mentions Mars.)
And since I have mentioned the Timothy Hines version, I might as well say a couple of things about it. It is extremely faithful to the novel, with almost all of the dialogue taken verbatim from the novels. There are a couple of minor differences (the extortionate newspaper cost is one pound, rather than four pence or a shilling as in the book, and the brother finds the bicycle on the street rather than taking it from a shop window).
Yes, the acting is not naturalistic. But it's the same style as the way the Jane Seymour character acts on stage in the Edwardian period in SOMEWHERE IN TIME. Yes, the image compositing has flaws; so does the compositing in the Paris flashback and other scenes in CASABLANCA. Yes, the effects look non-realistic at times, but if you like the visual effects and style of such movies as SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE or SIN CITY, this should present no problems.
The Hines/period version is available on DVD for $8.42 at Walmart, or $10.49 from amazon.com. Considering how much movie tickets for the Spielberg version cost, this is cheaper than two matinee tickets. I really hope that people would give this one a chance.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/19/2011]
We recently watched WAR OF THE WORLDS for the umpteenth time, and I noticed yet more new things. For example, the scene of the Martian war machine coming down the street at about 33 minutes into the film is the same scene as the one at the end when the ship crashes. That is, it was shot as a single scene, and then cut so the first half was used in the early scene and the rest at the end.
There are scenes in the middle of the film of animals fleeing in terror: wild horses, deer, and birds. But in the horse scene you can see wranglers along the ridge driving the horse down the side of the hill.
At the end, all of the Martian war machines in Los Angeles go silent at the same instant--a very unlikely scenario.
And while there are a few Hispanic characters, there is only one Asian (other than visiting dignitaries) and no African-Americans. This hardly reflects the composition of Los Angeles at the time.
"Murderbot" series by Martha Wells:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/19/2018]
ALL SYSTEMS RED (ISBN 978-0-25021471-3), ARTIFICIAL CONDITION (ISBN 978-0-250-18692-8), ROGUE PROTOCOL (ISBN 978-0-250-19178-6), and EXIT STRATEGY (ISBN 978-0-250-18546-4) by Martha Wells are the four books that form her "Murderbot" series. They are published as part of Tor Books line of novellas, about which my only complaint is the price: $17.99 for a novella seems rather steep, especially as this makes the cost for the full story, which might otherwise be published as a single volume novel, a rather pricey $71.96. Most novels normally run $28.99 or so.
Price aside (and there are always libraries), I definitely recommend this series. It's noir fiction with a twist: the first-person narrator is a security bot, basically a robot (with some organic parts) who has broken free of its controlling software and is now functioning independently, although no one else knows this (at least at first). Each book has a mystery and/or a task that requires what is effectively a private eye. Think of it as a cyborg Philip Marlowe.
Wells intended the character to be truly genderless, and the character uses "it" and its declensions to refer to itself. She also has characters who are "tercera" and use the pronouns "te" et al, so our narrator need not appear either male or female when attempting to pass for human.)
Because it has so many interesting aspects--noir, enhanced humans, gender issues, the rise of corporate governments--I recommend the "Murderbot" series.