Bøker av H. G. Wells

In a novel written on the eve of World War I, H. G. Wells imagines a war “to end all wars” that begins in atomic apocalypse but ends in an enlightened utopia.Writing in 1913, on the eve of World War I’s mass slaughter and long before World War II’s mushroom cloud finale, H. G. Wells imagined a war that begins in atomic apocalypse but ends in a utopia of enlightened world government. Set in the 1950s, Wells’s neglected novel The World Set Free describes a conflict so horrific that it actually is the war that ends war.  Wells—the first to imagine a “uranium-based bomb”—offers a prescient description of atomic warfare that renders cities unlivable for years: “Whole blocks of buildings were alight and burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged flames looking pale and ghastly and attenuated in comparison with the full-bodied crimson glare beyond.” Drawing on discoveries by physicists and chemists of the time, Wells foresees both a world powered by clean, plentiful atomic energy—and the destructive force of the neutron chain reaction. With a cast of characters including Marcus Karenin, the moral center of the narrative; Firmin, a proto-Brexiteer; and Egbert, the visionary young British monarch, Wells dramatizes a world struggling for sanity. Wells’s supposedly happy ending—a planetary government presided over by European men—may not appeal to contemporary readers, but his anguish at the world’s self-destructive tendencies will strike a chord. Sarah Cole is the author of Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells and The Twentieth Century (2019). The Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Dean of Humanities at Columbia University, she is the cofounder of the NYNJ Modernism Seminar and founder of the Humanities War and Peace Initiative at Columbia. She is also the author of Modernism, Male Friendship, and the First World War (2003) and At the Violet Hour: Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland (2012). Joshua Glenn, who was the first to describe the years 1900–1935 as science fiction’s “Radium Age,” has helped popularize stories from the era for over a decade now. A former Boston Globe staffer and publisher of the indie intellectual journal Hermenaut, he is coauthor of The Idler’s Glossary (2008), Significant Objects (2012), and the family activities guide UNBORED (2012). He is also cofounder of the brand consultancy Semiovox; and he publishes the blogHiLobrow. 

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

H. G. Wells' classic science-fiction novel about a man who's turned himself invisible.

The Time Machine When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700—and everything had changed. In this unfamiliar, utopian age creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings—unearth their secret and then return to his own time—until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen. H. G. Wells’s famous novel of one man’s astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895. It won him immediate recognition and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction. The War of the Worlds H. G. Wells’s science fiction classic, the first novel to explore the possibilities of intelligent life from other planets, is still startling and vivid nearly a century after its appearance, and a half century after Orson Welles’s infamous 1938 radio adaptation. This daring portrayal of aliens landing on English soil, with its themes of interplanetary imperialism, technological holocaust, and chaos, is central to the career of H. G. Wells, who died at the dawn of the atomic age. The survival of mankind in the face of “vast and cool and unsympathetic” scientific powers spinning out of control was a crucial theme throughout his work. Visionary, shocking, and chilling, The War of the Worlds has lost none of its impact since its first publication in 1898.

A scientist whose experiments have rendered him invisible veers into madness when he cannot change back in this thrilling and influential cornerstone of science fiction.A mysterious visitor to an inn, bundled up from head to toe and with his face covered in bandages, draws the attention and gossip of locals, but their wildest speculations come nowhere near the bizarre truth. This is the rogue scientist Griffin, who has made himself invisible and will shortly learn he can¿t return to normal. Brilliant, unhinged and full of undirected rage at his fate, what outrageous crimes might an invisible man commit? The Invisible Man first appeared in 1897 and has resonated in pop culture ever since, with its title character portrayed as both hero and villain in film, television and graphic novels. The author¿s most celebrated contributions to the fledgling literature of science fiction, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds, appeared over the course of less than five years and mark an extraordinary outpouring of the imagination.With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Invisible Man is both modern and readable.

The narrator tells of witnessing the unstoppable onslaught of invaders from Mars, leading toward the seemingly inevitable downfall of mankind in this landmark of the literary imagination and foundational novel of the science fiction genre. First published in 1897 and never out of print since, The War of the Worlds is told in a lucid, almost documentary, style. The realistically depicted setting, with cities and streets accurately described, gives the Martian attack, and the subsequent collapse of order in Victorian England, unforgettable impact. The British Empire brings its mightiest war machines to bear to no avail as the fleeing narrator is reduced to hiding in the ruins of civilization while being stalked by an inhuman enemy. Adapted repeatedly to film and television, the novel's central concept of humanity under attack by extraterrestrials has never ceased resonating in pop culture and may have inspired more imitations than any other trope in the science fiction genre. It is a tribute to the capacious imagination of H.G. Wells that this novel retains both a sense of otherworldly wonder and a harrowing intensity to this day. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The War of the Worlds is both modern and readable.

A Victorian gentleman arrives late to a party and reveals he used a machine of his own invention to travel time and has returned from a journey that took him 100,000 years into the future and beyond to the fading of the sun. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells endures as a work of unprecedented imaginative power.

The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells first serialised in 1897 in the UK. It is one of the earliest stories that detail a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race.

Dystopian Science Fiction, Alternate History "Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred-?" asked Graham. "They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a matter of fact." Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is there a mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things have changed tremendously, I suppose?" he said. "What is that shouting?" he asked abruptly... The man with the flaxen beard came back towards them, turned suddenly, listened for a moment, lifted his eyebrows at the older man, and hurried off through the archway towards the balcony. The tumult of shouting grew louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. He cursed suddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with an unfriendly expression...

An edition of H.G. Wells' famous novel, The Time Machine.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was an English author best known for his science fiction, including War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man. (The History of Mr. Polly is one of his middle-period novels that covered lower-middle class life.