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H.G. Wells. A visionary of beyond his time. The Life of H.G. Wells. Wells was born September 21 st , 1866
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H.G. Wells A visionary of beyond his time
The Life of H.G. Wells • Wells was born September 21st, 1866 • H.G. Wells didn’t receive many praises throughout his life, but H.G. Wells is the name of a crater on the moon and he was named an honorary fellow at the Imperial College of Science and Technology. • Wells died on August 13th, 1946.
The Life of H.G. Wells • A defining incident of young Wells's life was an accident he had in 1874, which left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he started reading books from the local library, brought to him by his father. He soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access; they also stimulated his desire to write.
The Life of H.G. Wells • His early novels, called "scientific romances", invented a number of themes now classic in science fiction in such works as The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, and The First Men in the Moon
Personal critique • H. G. Wells was one of the better writers I have had the privilege to read. • Compared to other literature I have read • The Great Gatsby, The Crucible, Farwell to Arms, and The Scarlet Letter. • I have found that Wells was way head of his time when it came to imagining the future. • Overall he comes in second to all of the books and authors I have read.
War of the Worlds A story that needs no explaining
Characters • Narrator- The narrator is a philosopher, he is one of the 1st people to find out about the arrival of the Martians. He has many close calls with the aliens but he ends up surviving. He is the most important character and many of the minor characters make a direct impact on the narrator.
Characters • Martians- The Martians are highly developed beings that resemble octopus’s, they have long tentacles and a head that has no body. They feed by taking blood from living organism’s. They end up dying out because of a bacterial disease on earth.
Characters • Artillery Man- After dodging the heat ray of one of the martian’s, this man stumbles into the narrators garden. The artillery man is smart because he takes many precautions in order to avoid the aliens, he branches away from the narrator in order to rejoin the military at one point in the book. They run into each other again but by this time the artillery man is pretty much a drunk who has totally changed since their first encounter.
Characters • Curate- The representative of faith in this book, he becomes crazy once he sees the church destroyed. He won’t part with the narrator, but they have opposite personalities so they clash often. At one point, when they are in a building trying to hide out from the martian’s, the curate chooses to not be quiet and the narrator is forced to kill him so he himself can survive.
Characters • Wife- She affects the story more with what she did for the narrator than what she did. She gave the narrator some direction on their journey, and even though when they reach Leatherhead they part from eachother.
Setting • The story War of the Worlds takes place in many different locations, it starts off in small towns alongside the country in England.
Setting • The narrator’s home is in Woking, the first couple chapters take place in Woking. Once the martians come they decide to make the journey to the town of Leatherhead.
Setting • On the way to Leatherhead they stop in many towns to avoid the martians. The story ends in London where the narrator see’s the end of the martians.
Setting • The image of the world changes drastically throughout the book, at the beginning the world looks just how it does today but towards the end the world looks deathly and the narrator begins to find dead bodies all over the place.
Literary Elements • Wells seems to be saying, as he was to throughout his writings, that humanity is nothing but a cog in the greater machine of science. • This message comes across in the narrator's tone, in the losses that the world encounters, and even in the unexpected way in which the Martians die.
Literary Elements • The fact that the book gives readers a happy ending when he is reunited with his wife does nothing to negate the fact that that he does not think of her while he is out on the road, struggling for survival. • His rationalism is what makes him turn the others whom he encounters into symbols for society's doomed framework. • The curate, for example, stands for religion, and when the narrator sees him crumble psychologically he realizes that faith is not strong enough to offer solace when the pressure is truly on.
Literary Elements • In this novel, Wells tried to do what he attempted in most of what he wrote: to help mankind attain a wiser, more informed attitude about the future of the human race. • He wrote to a friend that perhaps such a catastrophe as a Martian invasion could bring the world's people to their senses and improve the state of society.
Summary • The book starts off with explosions being witnessed on Mars. That creates some talk within the scientific community, so when a meteor lands in Horsell Common just southwest of London, many people decide to investigate. The narrator if the story who is never named, goes and checks it out and discovers that it is a cylinder from outer space.
Summary • The cylinder opens and out pop an alien race of martians. At first they have difficulty coping with the earth’s atmosphere, but when deputies tried to get close to the cylinder the martians zap them with their heat rays. This scares the narrator enough to decide to make him move to Leatherhead until the threat is averted.
Summary • Once he arrives there he realizes that the martians have created tripods that allow them to move freely on earth, this shows him that the martians are actually quite intelligent. The narrator meets many friends on his journey, no one person really stands out as someone that helped him during his voyage.
Summary • More cylinders begin arriving all over Europe, and the a martian vegetation begins to grow that takes over all plants that human’s rely on, making the human race essentially second tier compared to these new martians.
Summary • The narrator finds himself in an abandoned building with the curate, who is explained more in depthly in the characters section of my presentation. The narrator ends up having to kill the curate to protect himself from the martians, even though the martians flee soon after he kills his comrad.
Summary • The narrator is all alone and decides to try to take his own life by trying to head straight for the Martians.
Summary • he would’ve succeeded if all the martians weren’t dead from a pathogenic bacteria. After this, society returns to normal and they now know that the universe is much larger than they ever could’ve anticipated.
Personal critique • I liked the book War of the Worlds because it was an interesting difference between the book and the movie. I really liked the movie so seeing how the book differed from the film was a new experience. The characters in the book were all fun to read about in their own way, and the plot contained many crazy situations that were great to read about. I would recommend reading this book to other people, especially if you have seen the movie!
The Time Machine This is to be presented in one day : Yesterday
Characters • The Time Traveler- The narrator refers to him in this name throughout the book, never once mentioning a real name. He resides in London, and he is a creative man who invents a time machine.
Characters • Narrator- The narrator’s name is Mr. Hillyer, he is a dinner guest of the time traveler one night and decides to return the next day out of sheer curiosity.
Characters • Weena- Weena is one of the people that the time traveler discovers on his journeys through time, she is one of the Eloi. The time traveler explains that is difficult to distinct between genders when looking at Eloi people, but he seems very sure that Weena is a female. The time traveler and Weena develop a bond after he saves her from drowning.
The Time Machine- Setting • The story takes place in a few locations, the first one being the time traveler’s house, where he is explaining his theory of time travel. • The story shifts settings when the time traveler begins to time travel. • The setting zaps to 802,701 AD in a world where there are fading buildings and little people called Eloi and Morlocks.
Literary Elements • Major themes between the Eloi and Morlock races. • The story is often perceived from a Darwinian perspective • The Time Traveller allege that the contradictory characteristics of the Eloi and Morlock exist within the individual and are held together by love and academic interest.
Literary Elements • Social class was a theme in Wells' The Time Machine in which the Time Traveler speaks of the future world, with its two races, having evolved
Literary Elements • Even now, does not a worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth? • Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people. is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. • rich assured of their wealth and comfort, and the rest of humanity assigned to lifelong toil
Summary • The story begins when the time traveler is explaining to some of his dinner guests his theory of time traveling. The dinner ends and they come back soon to find that the time traveler has been using his time machine since there last dinner.
Summary • He goes to 802,701 AD where he encounters two differents types of people, the Eloi who are friendly and live above ground, and the Morlocks who are evil creatures that live underground. • The time traveler has a theory that the human race divided in two at one point and the Morlocks are the lower class workers and the Eloi’s are upper class people who have always lived very comfortable lives.
Summary • The time traveler has his time machine stolen by the Morlocks, after befriending a girl named Weena he decides to confront the Morlocks about his stolen time machine. The morlocks attack him and he cannot defend himself for long, leading him to retreat.
Summary • After his retreat he comes to the conclusion that the Morlocks only have one weakness, and that is that they are afraid of fire. Once the Morlocks hunt him down, the time traveler starts a fire, leading to the death of many Morlocks, but sadly his friend Weena passes away as well.
Summary • After this battle the Morlocks catch him, they show the time traveler his time machine and he immediately jumps on it to escape that time period and the Morlocks forever. Before he arrives home he stops twice more throughout the future, once a few years down the road where he lands on a beach and his attacked by giant crabs.
Summary • His final stop is thirty million years in the future where the only life left on earth is a big black blob with tentacles. After this he returns home to rest for a bit, having only been gone for three hours in normal time. The next day he leaves again for another journey, only this time he never comes back.
Personal critique • The Time Machine was a fantastic book. It was very condensed and I couldn’t tell if I liked that aspect or not, but I’ve never read a book that was under 200 pages that has contained so much material, and good material at that. I would suggest reading this to my classmates, it is an easy read yet still a book that can make you think.
Works credited • H. G. Wells biography • By: Luke • Power Point Slides and layout • By: Luke • The Time Machine • By: Kelly • War of the Worlds • By: Dylan
