The Time Machine and The Invisible Man - Softcover

Wells, H.G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451518772 ISBN 13: 9780451518774

Publisher: Signet Classics, 1984

Synopsis

"The Time Machine", one of the most loved science fiction novels of all time, is H. G. Wells 1895 novel which crafts a vivid and haunting picture of an earth some 800,000 years into the future. The first novel about time travel, "The Time Machine" was written during a period of great technological advancement, the impacts of which were of serious concern to Wells. The author poses the question in the novel; will technology ever go too far? The future world of the 'Eloi', depicted in the novel, warns of the dangerous consequences of unchecked technological advancements. Also included in this edition is another of Wells' most popular works, "The Invisible Man". It is the story of a scientist, Griffen, who discovers a serum that will turn his entire body invisible. The initial excitement over the possibilities quickly dissipates when Griffen, who uses the formula on himself, is unable to turn himself visible again. "The Invisible Man" is a cautionary tale about tampering with the laws of the universe. It is the story of how one scientist's great discovery leads him into a state of madness. Readers will delight in these two cautionary tales about the potential dangers of scientific and technological progress.

About this title

About the Author

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was born in Bromley, Kent, England. His father was a professional cricketer and sometime shopkeeper, his mother a former lady's maid. Although "Bertie" left school at fourteen to become a draper's apprentice (a life he detested), he later won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, where he studied with the famous Thomas Henry Huxley. He began to sell articles and short stories regularly in 1893. In 1895, his immediately successful novel The Time Machine rescued him from a life of penury on a schoolteacher's salary. His other "scientific romances"--The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901), and The War in the Air (1908)--won him distinction as the father of science fiction. Henry James saw in Wells the most gifted writer of the age, but Wells, having coined the phrase "the war that will end war" to describe World War I, became increasingly disillusioned and focused his attention on educating mankind with his bestselling Outline of History (1920) and his later utopian works. Wells witnessed a world more terrible than any of his imaginative visions, and he bitterly observed: "Reality has taken a leaf from my book and set itself to supercede me."

John Calvin Batchelor is the acclaimed author of such imaginative novels as The American Falls, People's Republic of Antarctica, and Gordon Liddy Is My Muse.

Paul Youngquist is professor of English and associate chair of Graduate Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He's the author of three books: Race, Romanticism, and The Atlantic; Madness and Blake's Myth (1991); and Monstrosities: Bodies and British Romanticism (2003), as well as numerous articles on a variety of subjects.

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Publication date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451518772
• ISBN 13: 9780451518774
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback