H. G. Wells

Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) was an English writer who helped define modern science fiction through scientific possibility and social criticism. The Time Machine projects class division into a remote future where human evolution has split along lines of power and labour. The War of the Worlds reverses imperial confidence through an overwhelming invasion, while The Invisible Man follows discovery into isolation, violence and failed responsibility. The Island of Doctor Moreau tests the ethics of experiment and domination; The First Men in the Moon extends Wells’s interest in unfamiliar societies beyond Earth. Across these books, invention is never merely a marvel: it exposes assumptions about progress, hierarchy and human nature. The Time Machine offers his most compact union of adventure and argument, whereas The War of the Worlds gives the same critical imagination a broader, catastrophic scale.