Results for 'h g wells'

In the Days of the Comet

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. In the Days of the Comet is a 1906 science fiction novel by H. G. Wells in which the vapors of a comet are used as a device which brings about a profound and lasting transformation in the attitudes and perspectives of humankind. The story revolves around William Leadford, an unemployed student living in the industrial town of Clayton in Britain. He is strongly Socialist and strives for a change in power from upper-class, caused by the squalid living conditions caused by industrial development in the town and country. Although dates are never specified, the era is supposed to be shortly preceding a war to that effect where about half-way through the book (in the Chapter titled "WAR") Britain declares war on Germany. For the most part of the first half of the book, it is a retrospective description by William in first-person describing the grit and vile impudence that the lower-class resides in, and develops the love story between Willie and a middle-class girl named Nettie, living in another town named Checkshill.

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Kipps

Kipps is the story of Arthur "Artie" Kipps, an illegitimate orphan raised by his aunt and uncle on the southern coast of England in the town of New Romney. Kipps falls in love with neighbor friend Ann Pornick but soon loses touch with her as he begins an apprenticeship at a drapery establishment in the port town of Folkestone. After a drunken evening with his new friend Chitterlow, an aspiring playwright, Kipps discovers he is to inherit a house and sizable income from his grandfather. Kipps then struggles to understand what his new-found wealth means in terms of his place in society and his love life.While today H. G. Wells is best known for his "scientific romances" such as The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau, Wells considered Kipps his favorite work. Wells worked closely with (some say pestered) his publisher Macmillan to employ creative promotional schemes, and thanks to a cheap edition sales blossomed to over 200,000 during the first two decades of publication. It was during this period that his prior futuristic works became more available and popular with American audiences.

The Garden of Cyrus

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Garden of Cyrus or The Quincunciall Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered is a Discourse written by Sir Thomas Browne. It was first published in 1658, along with its diptych companion, Urn-Burial. In modern times it has been recognised as Browne's major literary contribution to Hermetic wisdom. The Garden of Cyrus is Browne's mystical vision of the interconnection of art, nature and the Universe via numerous symbols including the number five, the quincunx pattern, the figure X and Network pattern. Its slender but compressed pages of imagery, symbolism and associative thought are evidence of Sir Thomas Browne's complete understanding of a fundamental quest of Hermetic philosophy, namely proof of the wisdom of God .

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Tono-Bungay

Tono-Bungay, published in 1909, is a semi-autobiographical novel by H. G. Wells. Though it has some fantastical and absurdist elements, it is a realist novel rather than one of Well's "scientific romances."The novel is written in the first person from the point of view of George Ponderevo, the son of the housekeeper at a large estate. He is made to feel his inferiority when he is banished after fighting with the son of one of the owner's aristocratic relatives, and is sent to live with his own poor but religiously fervent relatives. He can't abide or agree with their religious views and returns to his mother who sends him on to live with his Uncle, Edward Ponderevo, then a local pharmacist in a small town. Uncle Ponderevo, though, has grand plans, and eventually makes a fortune by selling a quack patent medicine he calls "Tono-Bungay." George joins him in this endeavour and becomes rich himself, eventually turning his interests towards the new science of aeronautics. Meanwhile the Tono-Bungay scheme expands enormously and begins to topple towards its own destruction.Throughout the novel, George comments cynically on England's class system, the shabbiness of commerce, and the lies told in advertising. We also follow his unfortunate love life, his unwise marriage, his divorce, and his eventual reconnection with a woman he loved as a child.Tono-Bungay met with a mixed reception on first release, but has since come to be considered as perhaps Wells' finest realist novel, an assessment Wells himself shared.

The Time Ships

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Time Ships is a 1995 science fiction novel by Stephen Baxter. A sequel to The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, it was officially authorized by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original's publication. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Philip K. Dick Award in 1996, as well as the British Science Fiction Association Award in 1995. It was also nominated for the Hugo, Clarke, and Locus Awards in 1996. After the events related in The Time Machine, the Time Traveller (his first name, Moses, is given in the novel but applied to the Time Traveller's younger self) prepares, in 1891, to return to the year 802,701 and save Weena, the Eloi who died in the fire with the Morlocks. He reveals that the quartz construction of the time machine is suffused with a radioactive substance he calls Plattnerite for the mysterious benefactor who gave him the sample to study twenty years earlier, in 1871.

Time Travel in Fiction

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Time travel is a common theme in science fiction and is depicted in a variety of media. It simply means either going forward in time or backward, like seeing the future, or the past. Time travel can form the central theme of a book, or it can be simply a plot device. Time travel in fiction can ignore the possible effects of the time-traveler's actions, as in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, or it can use one resolution or another of the Grandfather paradox. Although The Time Machine by H. G. Wells was instrumental in causing the idea of time travel to enter the public imagination, non-technological forms of time travel had appeared in a number of earlier stories, and some even earlier stories featured elements suggestive of time travel, but remain somewhat ambiguous.