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I will post background information by the end of the weekend. Please feel free to post any information you have here in the meantime.

I did a paper in college on Wells, one of the first sci-fi writers. This early example of the "mad-scientist" story warns us that a scientist must be mad to "play God, " and only evil will follow. It came after Shelley's "Frankenstein" (1818) and Wells' "The Island of Doctor Moreau" (1896), novels with a similar theme.

Wells' sci-fi novels have all been filmed at least twice. Try "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (pre-Hays-code in 1933) if you want your skin to crawl. The 1933 (also pre-code) film of "TheIM," with Claude Rains is a great classic that captures the spirit of the book, although in a contemporary setting. Its visual effects were progressive for its time. Wells viewed the film but wasn't pleased by the characterization of Griffin, the main character.
I have no interest in the remake. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Wells' political and socialist writings are outdated and hardly ever read today, maybe not at all.

Linda2 wrote: "This early example of the "mad-scientist" story warns us that a scientist must be mad to "play God, " and only evil will follow. ..."

I think that moral if fitting for many of the scientific breakthroughs that are happening recently (within the past 20 or 30 years). Don't get me wrong, scientific breakthroughs can, in many cases, benefit mankind. One the other hand, just because you (the general you) do something, doesn't mean you should.

And I forget to mention "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," around the same period. After "TIM," the concept of the mad scientist was unleashed in a thousand films and books, even in silent films. But most weren't about benefiting mankind, just about doing it because you could : becoming invisible to be powerful, merging man and animals, unleashing a mummy from the dead, merging man and wolf, etc. And those scientists were literally insane.

Today, it's mostly folks on the fringes who object to medical breakthroughs. I don't want to get into politics or religion here, so I'll leave it at that.

I'm looking forward to your background info.

Availability: various formats

Biography

British author Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) is sometimes considered, along with French author Jules Verne, to be one o the Fathers of Science Fiction. Wells considered his work, however, to be something quite different from Verne's, and as “science fiction� he considered his own work inferior. Here is a quote from his
preface to Scientific Romances:

“As a matter of fact, there is no literary resemblance whatever between the anticipatory inventions of the great Frenchman [Verne] and these fantasies. His work dealt almost always with actual possibilities of invention and discovery, and he made some remarkable forecasts. The interest he invoked was a practical one; he believed and told that this or that thing could be done, which was not at that time done.�

Wells was born at Atlas House in Bromley, Kent, on September 21, 1866. Called "Bertie" in the family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells (a former domestic gardener, and at the time a shopkeeper and professional cricketer) and his wife, Sarah Neal (a former domestic servant). A defining incident of young Wells's life was an accident in 1874 that left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he began to read books from the local library, brought to him by his father. He soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access; they also stimulated his desire to write.

In 1880 Wells found himself an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium, Hyde's. His experiences at Hyde's, where he worked a thirteen-hour day and slept in a dormitory with other apprentices, later inspired his novels The Wheels of Chance, The History of Mr. Polly, and Kipps, which portray the life of a draper's apprentice as well as providing a critique of society's distribution of wealth. In 1883, Wells persuaded his parents to release him from the apprenticeship, taking an opportunity offered by Midhurst Grammar School to become a pupil-teacher which meant that Wells could continue his self-education in earnest.

The following year, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science in South Kensington, now part of Imperial College London) in London, studying biology under Thomas Henry Huxley. As an alumnus, he later helped to set up the Royal College of Science Association, of which he became the first president in 1909. Wells studied in his new school until 1887.

Wells soon entered the Debating Society of the school. These years mark the beginning of his interest in a possible reformation of society. He was among the founders of The Science School Journal, a school magazine that allowed him to express his views on literature and society, as well as trying his hand at fiction; a precursor to his novel The Time Machine was published in the journal under the title The Chronic Argonauts. The school year 1886�87 was the last year of his studies.

During 1888, Wells stayed in Stoke-on-Trent, living in Basford. He wrote in a letter to a friend from the area that "the district ("The Potteries," the neighborhood he lived in) made an immense impression on me." The inspiration for some of his descriptions in The War of the Worlds is thought to have come from his short time spent here, seeing the iron foundry furnaces burn over the city, shooting huge red light into the skies. His stay in The Potteries also resulted in the macabre short story "The Cone", set in the north of the city.

After teaching for some time, he entered the College of Preceptors (College of Teachers). He later received his Licentiate and Fellowship FCP diplomas from the College. In 1889�90, he managed to find a post as a teacher at Henley House School in London, where he taught A. A. Milne (whose father ran the school). His first published work was a Text-Book of Biology in two volumes (1893).

Upon leaving the Normal School of Science, Wells was left without a source of income. His aunt Mary invited him to stay with her for a while, which solved his immediate problem of accommodation. During his stay at his aunt's residence, he grew increasingly interested in her daughter, Isabel, whom he later courted. To earn money, he began writing short humorous articles for journals such as The Pall Mall Gazette, later collecting these in volume form as Select Conversations with an Uncle (1895) and Certain Personal Matters (1897). So prolific did Wells become at this mode of journalism that many of his early pieces remain unidentified. According to David C Smith, "Most of Wells's occasional pieces have not been collected, and many have not even been identified as his. Wells did not automatically receive the byline his reputation demanded until after 1896 or so and as a result, many of his early pieces are unknown. It is obvious that many early Wells items have been lost." His success with these shorter pieces encouraged him to write book-length work, and he published his first novel, The Time Machine, in 1895.

In 1891, Wells married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells. The couple agreed to separate in 1894 when he had fallen in love with one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins (1872�1927, later called Jane) with whom he moved to Woking, Surrey in May 1895. They lived in a rented house in the town center for just under 18 months and married at St Pancras register office in October 1895. His short period in Woking was perhaps the most creative and productive of his whole writing career, for while there he planned and wrote The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, completed The Island of Doctor Moreau, wrote and published The Wonderful Visit and The Wheels of Chance, and began writing two other early books When the Sleeper Wakes and Love and Mr. Lewisham.

Wells had affairs with a significant number of women. In December 1909, he had a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves. Between 1910�1913, novelist Elizabeth von Arnim was one of his mistresses. In 1914, he had a son, Anthony West (1914�1987), by the novelist and feminist Rebecca West, 26 years his junior. In 1920�21, and intermittently until his death, he had a love affair with the American birth control activist Margaret Sanger. Between 1924 and 1933 he partnered with the 22-year younger Dutch adventurer and writer Odette Keun, with whom he lived in Lou Pidou, a house they built together in Grasse, France. Wells dedicated his longest book to her (The World of William Clissold, 1926). When visiting Maxim Gorky in Russia 1920, he had slept with Gorky's mistress Moura Budberg, then still Countess Benckendorf and 27 years his junior. In 1933, when she left Gorky and emigrated to London, their relationship renewed and she cared for him through his final illness. Wells asked her to marry him repeatedly, but Budberg strongly rejected his proposals. In Experiment in Autobiography (1934), Wells wrote: "I was never a great amorist, though I have loved several people very deeply".

Wells's literary reputation declined as he spent his later years promoting causes that were rejected by most of his contemporaries as well as by younger authors whom he had previously influenced. In this connection, George Orwell described Wells as "too sane to understand the modern world". G. K. Chesterton quipped: "Mr. Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message".

In 1940. Wells took part in a radio interview with Orson Welles, who two years previously had performed a famous radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds. During the interview, by Charles C Shaw, a KTSA radio host, Wells admitted his surprise at the widespread panic that resulted from the broadcast but acknowledged his debt to Welles for increasing sales of one of his "more obscure" titles.

Wells had diabetes and was a co-founder in 1934 of The Diabetic Association (now Diabetes UK). He died of unspecified causes on August 13, 1946, aged 79, at his home in London. In his preface to the 1941 edition of The War in the Air, Wells had stated that his epitaph should be: "I told you so. You damned fools". Wells' body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on August 16, 1946; his ashes were subsequently scattered into the English Channel at Old Harry Rocks near Swanage in Dorset.

General Overview of The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man was originally serialized in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it neither absorbs nor reflects light and thus becomes invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself but fails in his attempt to reverse it. An enthusiast of random and irresponsible violence, Griffin has become an iconic character in horror fiction. While its predecessors, The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau, were written using first-person narrators, Wells adopts a third-person objective point of view in The Invisible Man. The novel is considered influential and helped establish Wells as a "father of science fiction"]

Major Themes

Invisibility
Characters with extraordinary qualities, such as invisibility or superpowers, are common in literature, and at least a few invisible characters had appeared in novels, fairy tales, or mythology before Wells' publication. For example, in Sir Launfal: A Portrait of a Knight in Fourteenth Century England, by Thomas Chestre, the servant, Gyfre, is invisible. In fairy tales, a cloak of invisibility often made characters invisible, as evidenced by the fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes." Similarly, in Ovid's Metamorphoses, a character, Arethusa, becomes invisible by transforming into a stream.

Wells was the first author, however, to portray an invisible character who is not supernatural.

In The Invisible Man, Griffin achieves invisibility as a result of scientific advances. This invisibility represents the double-edged sword of scientific achievement: its advantages and disadvantages, its benefits to society, and its potential harm. In Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, science fiction scholar James Gunn points out that Griffin made himself invisible not for the benefit of society but for his own personal purposes. While Gunn states that Wells approved of scientific achievement to shake up the status quo, he questioned the use of scientific achievement for personal gain rather than social progress when such personal gain was antisocial. (view spoiler)[Kemp acknowledges the dangers of such an instrument of invisibility to humanity when he declares that Griffin is "mad ... inhuman ... pure selfishness." He states Griffin is thinking "of nothing but his own advantage, his own safety." Kemp's realization that Griffin plans to use his invisibility for self-serving purposes, even if they involve killing people, causes him to consider Griffin evil and a threat that must be eliminated. Following this announcement, he and Adye devise a plan to capture Griffin. (hide spoiler)]

Knowledge
The quest for knowledge, or how people seek to understand the natural world, is a central theme of the novel. Throughout the novel, Wells emphasizes the use of logic and tangible, concrete evidence to support assumptions about the natural world. For example, (view spoiler)[Mrs. Hall frequently attempts to understand Griffin by asking him questions. In the first chapter, she attempts to find an explanation for Griffin's bandages by asking, "So that if I may make so bold as to say it, sir�." Because Griffin cuts off her comment, she is unable to get answers to her questions. (hide spoiler)]

Other characters, such as (view spoiler)[Fearenside, use simple observation to explain the natural world. When Fearenside sees a blackness in Griffin's torn trouser pants, he connects this concrete evidence with his existing knowledge of creatures who have black and white skin in patches and concludes Griffin is a piebald. (hide spoiler)] Wells shows the flaws in this approach when it comes to understanding something that defies the known principles of science. (view spoiler)[Because Fearenside and the other villagers in Iping lack knowledge about the science of invisibility, they draw the wrong conclusions. Kemp is the only person with enough scientific knowledge to accept the concept of invisibility when Griffin presents it to him. But even he initially resists, saying, "I demonstrated conclusively this morning that invisibility�" because invisibility did not meet the criteria of logic and reasoning when he studied it. Faced with tangible evidence, however, he accepts the existence of the condition. (hide spoiler)]

Humanity versus Science
Wells explores the conflict between humanity and science by examining the effects of science on the social condition and on individuals. Does scientific and technological progress benefit or harm society? How does it affect free will? Griffin's invisibility is a symbol scientific achievement. How Griffin uses his invisibility reflects his immorality or lack of humanity.

Wells also poses the question: Did his invisibility make Griffin evil, or was Griffin evil before he became invisible? In other words, do humans have the free will to resist the effects of scientific progress or are their effects inevitable? Which is stronger: humanity or science? The novel shows that every scientific achievement or invention, even invisibility, has some impact on society.

Power versus Morality
The theme of power versus morality extends beyond science in the novel to encompass interpersonal, social, and political relationships and interactions. Wells shows that civilization is based on varying levels of controls and restrictions, and that power must be guided by a sense of morality. With his plan for a reign of terror, Griffin represents a clear threat to humanity and social order.

Wells shows, however, that there are no absolutes in determining the morality of an action. This is evident in (view spoiler)[Kemp's repeated examinations of his conscience. For example, when Griffin takes shelter in Kemp's house, he exacts a promise from Kemp that he will not tell anyone he is there. Then, after reading the newspapers, Kemp realizes the danger Griffin may pose because of his invisibility and "the things he may do." Thus, he decides to write a note telling the constable that Griffin is in his house. First, though, he asks himself, "Would it be a breach of faith if�" before deciding that it would not be immoral to break his word when not doing so could cause public harm. (hide spoiler)]

Historical Background

Children's literature was a prominent genre in the 1890s. According to John Sutherland, Wells and his contemporaries such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling "essentially wrote boy's books for grown-ups." Sutherland identifies The Invisible Man as one such book. Wells said that his inspiration for the novella was "The Perils of Invisibility," one of the Bab Ballads by W. S. Gilbert, which includes the couplet "Old Peter vanished like a shot/but then - his suit of clothes did not." Another influence on The Invisible Man was Plato's Republic, a book which had a significant effect on Wells when he read it as an adolescent. In the second book of the Republic, Glaucon recounts the legend of the Ring of Gyges, which posits that, if a man were made invisible and could act with impunity, he would "go about among men with the powers of a god." Wells wrote the original version of the tale between March and June 1896. This version was a 25,000-word short story titled "The Man at the Coach and Horses" which Wells was dissatisfied with, so he extended it.

The Development of the Science Fiction Genre

Science fiction has its origins in the 19th century. In 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a story about a corpse brought to life. Other authors, such as H. Rider Haggard (1856�1925), Arthur Conan Doyle (1859�1930), and Ambrose Bierce (1842�1914), wrote short stories and novels that combined science and fantasy to describe hypothetical or future worlds. Edgar Allan Poe (1809�49) pioneered the literary form for these types of stories, and Jules Verne (1828�1905) helped to popularize the emerging genre.

Despite these authors' successes, science fiction was still in its early development during the late 19th century. The creation of mass magazines enabled increased publications and allowed science fiction stories to reach wider audiences. Wells was a leader in the use of mass magazines to publish science fiction stories that appealed to the public for their entertainment value. In doing so, he advanced the spread of the science fiction genre, which has earned him the title of one of the fathers of science fiction, along with Poe and Verne.

Scientific Background

Russian writer Yakov I. Perelman pointed out in Physics Can Be Fun (1913) that from a scientific point of view, a man made invisible by Griffin's method should have been blind because a human eye works by absorbing incoming light, not letting it through completely. Wells seems to show some awareness of this problem in Chapter 20, where the eyes of an otherwise invisible cat retain visible retinas. Nonetheless, this would be insufficient because the retina would be flooded with light (from all directions) that ordinarily is blocked by the opaque sclera of the eyeball. Also, any image would be badly blurred if the eye had an invisible cornea and lens.

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