HG Wells – HG Wells Biography

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Along with the more “realistic” Jules Verne, Herbert George Wells is considered the founder of science fiction; Narrative hypotheses such as time travel, the invasion of aliens or the ability to make oneself invisible (not to mention the possible effects of genetic experimentation) are due to him; all issues that, in hindsight, largely characterize current science fiction and that make Wells a true forerunner.

This visionary novelist wrote almost by accident. He was born on September 21, 1866 in Bromley, England, into a poor family. He inherited a passion for reading from his father, a man of broad interests, professional cricketer, and owner of a small pottery shop. However, despite these different activities, the income was barely enough to keep the family above misery.

It was, therefore, the economic difficulty of the family, which forced Herbert to drop out of college, to contribute to the family budget. The different biographies that were written after his death describe him in that time, fighting in the textile trade, behind the counter of a pharmacy or as a helper in a school. All unpleasant jobs for him, resulting in continual layoffs or jumping from job to job.

In 1884 Wells he struggled to return to school and received a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Science and Technology, London. There he would study all scientific subjects for three years, becoming particularly enthusiastic about the new Darwinian theory, of which he would become a fervent supporter. After graduation he became an assistant teacher at a school in Holt, North Wales. In 1888 he returned to teach in London, where he joined the Henley House School faculty and completed his education, graduating with honors in Zoology in 1890.

His work as a writer, however, has its origin in a pulmonary hemorrhage, which forced him to stay in bed for a long time, and induced him to take up pen and paper, and write articles and essays for newspapers and magazines (in 1893 also produced a biology textbook), based on the fantasies that had long been forming in his fertile mind.

In 1895 he managed to simultaneously publish a volume of short stories, “The stolen bacillus and other incidents“and the masterpieces”The time Machine” Y “The wonderful visit. “They were a resounding success: these strange and extraordinary novels earned him a reputation as a writer of exceptional vigor and imagination. The same year he married Amy Catherine Robbins, who had been his student (Wells He had already married his cousin in 1891, but the marriage had been annulled).

The series of novels continued at full speed and they came out in rapid succession. “The island of Dr. Moreau“,”The invisible man“,”War of the Worlds“,”The Man in the Moon“and others, whose dissemination would make him a world-famous author.
Achieved notoriety and economic well-being, HG Wells began to review his attitude and the issues he approached with a different perspective. Also due to the outbreak of the First World War, he became more interested in politics and in formulating specific ideas about the establishment of a “universal state” (adhering to a socialist current called “fabianism“and even managing to personally expose his ideas to Theodore Roosevelt and Stalin).

From that time there are four essays in which he exposed his theories, and two novels in which there are utopian visions of the future in a positive key. The old man Wells he saw science as a dark and mysterious necromantic power difficult to control and of uncertain consequences; now science was seen as a means to improve human conditions and to search for the beautiful, the true and the Just.

This optimistic vision would, unfortunately, once again be clouded with the advent of Nazism and the outbreak of the Second World War. His later writings, in fact, remind the Wells of its origins: with “The fate of Homo Sapiens“(written in 1939) and” Lmind to the edge of the abyss“(1945), the author seems to definitively condemn humanity to an end without the possibility of salvation.

Haunted by these dark visions HG Wells died in London on August 13, 1946. Two craters on the Moon and another on Mars, have been baptized “Wells crater” in his honor.