H. G. Wells was an extraordinarily clever writer. For much of his career science fiction wasn't so much in its infancy as still in the process of being born. He had predecessors, certainly: Verne, some stories by Poe, various philosophical authors. But the pulps hadn't started. There was no accrued genre lore.
So it's notable that he, even in a brand new field, was writing on more than one level. You could take his books at face value, but there's always an invitation to read them otherwise.
The novel I'm reading now, The First Men in the Moon, is a case in point. Struggling businessman Bedford and eccentric scientist Cavor float into space in a vessel made out of a new metal that Cavor has forged. On/in the moon they meet the insectoid Selenites and their giant mooncalves. But Wells bears no illusions that this is what the moon is like in any literal sense. And he knows the reader probably knows that as well. So the setup is more of a comment on the changing ways the universe has been seen. And there's a certain parodic intent to the two main characters, who are basically the only characters in the first half of the book.
This edition, from Penguin in 2005, looks great. Silkscreen artist Kate Gibb does the cover, and her illustration is as evocative as it is anachronistic.
2 comments:
Remembering the early science fiction authors you mentioned I immediately thought of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein written in the early 1800s as possibly the first of them. It certainly has become one of the most famous and beloved examples of how science had already changed the world enough that such a concept as a reanimated man could be taken seriously.
I've read several of H.G. Wells's books, ie. The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and, of course, The War of the Worlds but not this one. I've mentioned C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy a couple of times when we've talked about books and, oddly enough, the plot you described of The First Men in the Moon is similar to the first story in that series, Out of the Silent Planet. The two men who build the spaceship (and kidnap the hero Ransom, a professor on a walking holiday) plan to sell him to the inhabitants of Mars as a sacrifice (yes, they've been there before). One of the two plans to steal the gold that's plentiful on the planet. Things move along from there. Of course, Lewis came from a later generation than Wells and was very likely influenced by his book about the inhabitants of the moon.
The other author of early science fiction that Jer reminded me about was Robert Louis Stevenson and his book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It seems likely that the first science fiction authors presented a worldview that looked beyond the stuffy Victorian era. Technological changes were in the air and the most creative philosophers delighted in envisioning how things might change for better or, often more likely, worse.
I presume the Kate Gibb cover you like is the copy introduced by China Miéville. She is very good, but you know that already. The one she did for The Island of Dr. Moreau is pretty nice too.
Mary Shelley sort of falls into the category of philosophical writers I mentioned. Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, after all. Of course Frankenstein is a page turner of a novel as well. A little in the gothic tradition. It's very different from most movie adaptations of course, and James Whale in particular took no small number of liberties with it. I wonder if she would have approved or if she would have been like Stephen King vis-a-vis The Shining
Oddly enough the only one of the Perelandra books I've read is the last one, That Hideous Strength. It sounded like something I'd be interested in and it panned out, as I was very impressed by the book. Now that you've told me a little about Out of the Silent Planet I'll have to check that one out as well. Lewis was indeed from a later generation, and I believe Wells was a de facto atheist, which Lewis certainly wasn't by the time he became a novelist. Still, no reason he couldn't have admired the older author.
Stevenson I've always enjoyed. There's a lot going on with The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for all that it works as a simple thriller. Stevenson is said to have been influenced by the case of larcenous cabinet maker Deacon Brodie. Likely he was also influenced by the theories of both Darwin and Freud, which were gaining prominence in the late 19th century.
I don't know why I didn't mention Miéville. He's got a lot to say on the book and he's obviously absorbed a lot from Wells. Gibb's cover for Moreau is pretty stunning as well.
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