H. G. Wells

Biography

Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) was an English writer whose prolific output spanned science fiction, social commentary, history, and political advocacy. Born in Bromley, Kent, to a lower-middle-class family, Wells received a fragmented early education before winning a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in South Kensington, where he studied biology under Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley's influence on Wells's understanding of evolution and natural selection would permeate his literary work throughout his career. Wells published his first novel, The Time Machine, in 1895. This narrative of a Victorian inventor who travels to the year 802,701 established many conventions of the science fiction genre and introduced speculative extrapolation grounded in scientific principles as a literary method. In rapid succession, Wells produced The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), a study of vivisection and the boundaries between human and animal; The Invisible Man (1897), exploring the psychological consequences of scientific power without accountability; and The War of the Worlds (1898), depicting a Martian invasion of England that served as an implicit commentary on British imperialism. Beyond his scientific romances, Wells was a committed social thinker. His novels Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr Polly (1910) offered sharp depictions of English class structures, while Tono-Bungay (1909) satirized Edwardian commerce and social mobility. His nonfiction work The Outline of History (1920) became an international bestseller, presenting a unified narrative of human civilization. Wells was a member of the Fabian Society and an advocate for world governance, free education, and scientific planning. He met with world leaders including Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin to discuss global reform. His later works, including The Shape of Things to Come (1933), continued to blend speculative fiction with political argument. Wells published more than fifty novels alongside numerous short stories, essays, and works of popular science. He died in London in August 1946. His early scientific romances established foundational tropes and narrative structures that shaped the development of science fiction as a literary genre throughout the twentieth century.