Opinions on H.G. Wells novels -

[Grand Lunar]

Which ones do you think are the best?
Which ones have you read?
Is anyone able to guess which one my avatar is from without googling it?

 

[dunbrine47]

I'm going to say a Morlock, but what do I know.

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

I found The Time Machine to be a bit naïve. For a spoiled future society, The Brave New World is much better.
My vote goes to the other book I've read: War of the Worlds. It feels pretty realistic within the confines of its genre, and while some may think that the ending is a bit of a cop-out, there was realistically no other hope for the humanity.
I haven't read any others, maybe Doctor Moreau, but I don't remember if I read the book or only watched the movie.

 

[Ghostapplesause]

I like The War in the Air because of it's odd and retro-futurist take that the invention of the plane would cause the apocalypse.

 

[Grand Lunar]

I found The Time Machine to be a bit naïve. For a spoiled future society, The Brave New World is much better.
My vote goes to the other book I've read: War of the Worlds. It feels pretty realistic within the confines of its genre, and while some may think that the ending is a bit of a cop-out, there was realistically no other hope for the humanity.
I haven't read any others, maybe Doctor Moreau, but I don't remember if I read the book or only watched the movie.

Yeah, the politics aspect of The Time Machine hasn't aged well due to it having been entirely based on the class structure of Victorian era England, and since things have changed drastically since then the message doesn't totally hold up.

Technically the humans did manage to take out at least one of the tripods even with pre-WW1 weaponry though, possibly more outside the narrator's POV. Arguably a few tweaks to the writing could have spun it to have a human victory, but only a very narrow one with a death count akin to a nuclear holocaust. Could arguably have made the ending theme of humanity setting aside their differences and uniting to prepare for the threat of another Martian attack stronger.

 

[BigTubboWithLittleChina]

His stuff is generally great, and I'd recommend his short stories for a mix of grisly human horror such as The Cone, magical realism of the non-faggy kind such as The Magic Shop, and his apocalyptic science fiction such as Empire Of The Ants and Valley Of The Spiders. My favourite novel of his is The Invisible Man - decidedly small-scale despite the grandeur of Griffin's ambitions, and the character of Griffin himself is such a perfect blend of the pathetic, the comical and the genuinely disturbing that he's hard to resist.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Time Machine is my favorite. Interesting all the way through.

War of the Worlds starts out interesting and ends interesting, but gets kind of boring in the middle.

 

[ulsterscotsman]

The War of the Worlds is possibly my favorite novel of all time.

 

[millais]

For novels, it's hard to pick, most are pretty good. For short stories:

The Lord of the Dynamos
The Cone
Aepyornis Island

And I like "The Land Ironclads"

 

[Reynard]

I only got halfway through before I got busy with life and couldn't continue to read it, but The Island of Dr. Moreau really was great from what I read. It's like H.G. Wells understood what a lot of writers from that era didn't, and that's that you only need as much detail as necessary to convey what is going on and what things look like. I swear a lot of writers like Poe made me annoyed at how long they'd spend describing every detail no matter how small and unnecessary it is. Wells new that it's important to be succinct.

 

[Sailor_Jupiter]

I've read about half of those. JV is better. Less of an edgy neckbeard misanthrope.

 

[millais]

I've read about half of those. JV is better. Less of an edgy neckbeard misanthrope.

IMO, Verne is severely underrated among Anglophones literally due to generations of hackneyed, shitty bootleg translations

 

[PuToTyra]

The time machine is the best classic and it inspired countless other sci fi novels, movies, games, ideas....

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

He was way better than that dork, Jules Verne.

 

[chocolate honky]

I need Chinese translation

 

[GethN7]

I particularly loved The Time Machine's basic premise, and I thought it was clever that instead of existing outside of time, the machine itself remained in the same place, all that changed was that the time sped by at hyper speed until it stopped, leaving the traveler in the same place they started, just at its state further along in the timestream.

Have to admit it seems a tad dated now, particularly his view how society would degenerate, but despite that it's a great work of fiction.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't there an edition that padded out the part just before the traveler returns to his own time by going a few hundred years from his own time to find super science style future at war?

I know there were a few other versions that tacked on their own semi-official fanfic to it, was wondering if anyone stumbled across the version I'm referring to.

 

[millais]

I particularly loved The Time Machine's basic premise, and I thought it was clever that instead of existing outside of time, the machine itself remained in the same place, all that changed was that the time sped by at hyper speed until it stopped, leaving the traveler in the same place they started, just at its state further along in the timestream.

Have to admit it seems a tad dated now, particularly his view how society would degenerate, but despite that it's a great work of fiction.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't there an edition that padded out the part just before the traveler returns to his own time by going a few hundred years from his own time to find super science style future at war?

I know there were a few other versions that tacked on their own semi-official fanfic to it, was wondering if anyone stumbled across the version I'm referring to.

I give him a pass for the dated feel. He was literally creating a whole new genre of fiction, so in the beginning, there's a part where the Time Traveler has to methodically explain the very concept of time travel to the narrator. It takes him a couple pages to communicate the concept in full, and keep in mind throughout the entire lecture, he's not explaining how the Time Machine mechanically functions or the scientific principles underpinning its function. He's literally just explaining what a Time Machine does.

Before "The Time Machine", the only thing resembling time travel fiction were the archetypal Rip van Winkle legends common to many cultures. Though I think Mark Twain's "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" predates "The Time Machine" by a few years, Wells was still the first to come up with the idea of time travel as a controlled and manipulable phenomenon