The Science Fiction of H.G. Wells

247 Pages·1981·19.078 MB·English

by  Frank McConnell

The Science Fiction of
H.G.WEllS
Frank McConnell
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1981
The Science Rction of
H.G.WELLS
Science-Fiction Writers
ROBERT SCHOLES, GENERAL EDITOR
H. Bruce Franklin: Robert A. Heinlein: America
as Science Fiction
Frank McConnell: The Science Fiction of H. G. Wells
Copyright © 1981 by Oxford University Press. Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
McConnell. Frank D 1942-
The science fiction of H. G. Wells.
(Science fiction writers series)
1. Wells. Herbert George. 1866--1946
-Criticism and interpretation.
I. Title. II. Series.
PR5777.M3 1981 823'.912 80-19675
ISBN 0-19-502811-2
ISBN 0-19-502812-0 pbk.
Grateful acknowledgment is given to Jupiter Books for
permission to reprint two photographs of Wells from
H. G. Wells: A Pictorial Biography. by Frank Wells.
1977. Both pictures are from a private collection.
Printed in the United States of America
For
Carolyn,
Christopher,
and Kathryn
EOITOR·S FOREWORD
For the first eight decades of this century critics of fiction have
reserved their highest praises for novels and stories that em
phasize individual psychology in characterization, unique sty
listic nuances in language, and plausibility in the events pre
sented. It is an interesting feature of literary history that
during this same period of time a body of fiction has
flourished which privileges the type over the individual, the
idea over the word, and the unexpected over the plausible
event. This body of work, which has come to be called-with
only partial appropriateness-"science" fiction, has had some
recognition from serious critics but still hovers between genu
ine acceptance and total dismissal in literary circles.
Schools now offer courses in science fiction--either be
cause one zealous teacher insists upon it, or because "the kids
read that stuff." But it is rare to hear of works of science fic
tion integrated into "regular" courses in modern literature.
The major reason for this is that as long as the dominant cri
teria are believed to hold for all fiction, science fiction will be
found inferior: deficient in psychological depth, in verbal
nuance, and in plausibility of event. What is needed is a criti
cism serious in its standards and its concern for literary value
but willing to take seriously a literature based on ideas, types,
and events beyond ordinary experience.
The Science-Fiction Writers series of critical volumes is an
attempt to provide that sort of criticism. In designing the
..
Vll
EDITOR'S FOREWORD
VllJ
series we have selected a number of authors whose body of
work has proved substantial, durable, and influential, and we
have asked an appropriate critic to make a book-length study
of the work of each author selected, taking that author
seriously enough to be critical and critically enough to be
serIOus.
In each volume we will include a general view of the au
thor's life and work, critical interpretations of his or her major
contributions to the field of science fiction, and a biographical
apparatus that will make these volumes useful as a reference
tool. The format of each book will thus be similar. But because
the writers to be considered have had careers of different
shapes, and because our critics are all individuals who have
earned the right to their own interpretive emphases, each
book will take its own shape within the limits of the general
format. Above all, each volume will express the critical views
of its author rather than some predetermined party line.
In the present volume Frank D. McConnell presents an in
troduction to the writer whose work has done more to shape
the whole field of science fiction than that of any other person.
H. G. Wells is a very special case as a science-fiction writer.
First of all, he wrote before the field of fiction had been clearly
divided into "serious" and "popular" works, with science fic
tion relegated to the "popular" sphere. And then Wells
worked both sides of the division between the realistic novel
and the speculative romance. His "scientific romances," as he
called them, were different from his novels of contemporary
life in that they assumed possibilities (time travel, invisibility)
contrary to the facts of ordinary existence, but they used
science to make these impossibilities plausible, and they de
scribed the romance world in the same realistic manner Wells
had developed for his ordinary novels. The result was a series
of short novels that have remained steadily in print for nearly
a century while much of Wells's more realistic work has dis
appeared from the publishers' lists.
These works were indeed popular and have remained so,
but they were more than that. They attracted the attention and
the praise of writers like Yevgeny Zayatin in Russia and Jorge
Luis Borges in Argentina, as well as that of the American
EDITOR'S FOREH'OHD JX
iOlpresario of pulp science fiction, Hugo Gcrnsbach. How
ever. the literary critics, with a few honorable exceptions like
Bernard Bergonzi. have renlained reluctant to take Wells's sci
entific rOOlances seriously as literature.
This, of course, is precisely \vhat Frank D. McConnell has
done in this book. Himself an expert in British literature of the
nineteenth century (and the author of books on romantic po
etry. and mythmaking) McConnell locates Wells in the intel
lectual life of his time and argues the case for the importance
of the scientific romances as literature. This is perhaps not a
case one would wish to make for all good science fiction;
some of it may be good as something other than literature. But
it is a case that can be made for Wells. as McConnell demon
strates.
It is, however, not exactly the case Wells would have made
for himself. In his celebrated dispute with Henry James, Wells
argued in favor of a fiction of ideas and social commitment,
while James made the Art of the novel (with a capital A) his
cause. The triumph of modernism in fiction made James the
apparent victor in this dispute. In the work of James Joyce,
Virginia Woolf, and others, a fiction of formal elegance and
psychological depth established its dominance, relegating
Wells's fiction of ideas and social commitment to the status of
a secondary or "popular" literature.
Meanwhile, Wells's own admittedly popular and entertain
ing scientific romances have triumphed over the works Wells
himself considered serious literature. Perhaps everyone was
wrong in some way that is only becoming apparent to us novv,
as science fiction is breaking out of the ghetto of "popularity."
McConnell's study of the literary quality of Wells's science
fiction should help us to answer that question. Meanwhile, it
will also serve-as it is meant to serve-as an introduction to
the work of a science-fiction writer whose contribution to the
field, because it was so early, will never be equaled,
August 1980 R.S.
ACKI\IDWLEDGMEI\ITS
The research for this book was begun during my stay at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Wash
ington, D.C. It is a pleasure again to express my gratitude to
that extraordinary institution, and to its administrators. I am
also grateful to the Northwestern University Office of Research
and Sponsored Programs for a grant that aided in the comple
tion of the manuscript.
Robert Scholes made some important suggestions that, I
think, have improved the quality of the book. John Wright, as
always, has been infallible in his support. And Kim Lewis of
Oxford Press did a splendid job of editing. The students in my
Science Fiction class at Northwestern have been an ideal. per
ceptive, and responsive audience for much of what is written
here. And the people to whom the book is dedicated have, as
always, made the whole enterprise worthwhile.
Evanston, Illinois F.M.
August 1980