"H.G. Wells - Complete Works" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

 H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells (1866-1946)
BIOGRAPHY
English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian, whose
science-fiction stories have been filmed many times. Wells's best
known books are THE TIME MACHINE (1895), THE
INVISIBLE MAN (1897), and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
(1898). Wells wrote over a hundred of books, about fifty of them
novels.
"No one would have believed, in the last years of the
nineteenth century, that human affairs were being
watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater
than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as
men busied themselves about their affairs they were
scrutinized and studied, parhaps almost as narrowly
as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the
transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a
drop of water." (from War of the Worlds)
Along with George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Aldous
Huxley's Brave New World, which was an pessimistic answer to
scientific optimism, Wells's novels are among the classical works
of science-fiction, but his romantic and enthusiastic conception of
technology later turned more doubtfull. His bitter side is seen early
in the novel BOON (1915), which was a parody of Henry James.
H.G. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent. His father was a
shopkeeper and a professional cricketer, and his mother served
from time to time as a housekeeper at the nearby estate of Uppark.
His father's business failed and to elevate the family to middle-
class status, Wells was apprenticed like his brothers to a draper,
spending the years between 1880 and 1883 in Windsor and
Southsea. Later he recorded these years in KIPPS (1905). In the
story Arthur Kipps is raised by his aunt and uncle. Kipps is also
apprenticed to a draper. After learning that he has been left a
fortune, Kipps enters the upper-class society, which Wells
describes with sharp social criticism.
In 1883 Wells became a teacher/pupil at Midhurst Grammar Scool.
He obtained a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in
London and studied there biology under T.H. Huxley. However,
his interest faltered and in 1887 he left without a degree. He taught
in private schools for four years, not taking his B.S. degree until
1890. Next year he settled in London, married his cousin Isabel
and continued his career as a teacher in a correspondence college.
From 1893 Wells became a full-time writer.
After some years Wells left Isabel for one of his brightest students,
Amy Catherine, whom he married in 1895. As a novelist Wells
made his debut with The Time Machine, a parody of English class
division and a satirical warning that human progress is not
inevitable. The Time Traveller lands in the year 802701 and finds
two people: the Eloi, weak and little, who live above ground, and
the Morlocks, carnivorous creatures that live below ground. Much
of the realism of the story was achieved by carefully studied