Wells and Darwin
Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, a suburb of London, to a lower-middle-class family. He attended London University and the Royal College of Science where he studied zoology. One of his professors instilled in him a belief in social as well as biological evolution which Wells later cited as the important and influential aspect of his education. This is how it all began. Maybe without this professor Wells wouldn't be the famous author he is today. Most of Wells novels are science fiction and have a great deal of some kind of human society theme, or Darwinism in mind. It is a theme that is seen in his most famous science fiction writings. H.G. Wells seems to convey a sense of Darwinism and change in the future of society in his major works. Wells has been called the father and Shakespeare of science fiction. He is best known today for his great work in science fiction novels and short stories. He depicted stories of chemical warfare, world wars, alien visitors and even atomic weapons in a time that most authors, or even people for that matter, were not thinking of the like. His stories opened a door for future science fiction writers who followed the trend that Wells wrote about. His most popular science fiction work
The Island of Doctor Moreau may well be the most famous novel written by H. It is also said that the "version of the island myth conveys a powerful and imaginative response to the implications of Evolution. The little excerpts I have been given to read, and the critics choice parts of his stories give the examples of this theme. It reminds me of a story I read my freshman year in high school, about a man who lives on a deserted island, and the people who are stranded there, he hunts them for fun. " (McConnell, 439) This is another reference to society's survival of the fittest, as he depicts civilization tearing at each other, and in the end, doing away with their creator. Most of the critics said the same thing about the novel, if not similarities. " (McConnell, 442) He wasn't the first man to realize and acknowledge the importance of Darwin's theory for the future of civilization, but he is said to be the first to assimilate that theory into his stories. He even used the phrase "atomic bomb" before anyone was using it, and described in close detail the power of the chain reaction explosions. The narrator of The Time Machine says of the Time Traveler that he "saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. "Moreau's genius is thwarted by society and so he preys on society," (Huntington, 446) The mad Doctor Moreau is opposed and against the society that has evolved around him and that he has been exposed to, so he seeks out to destroy it, by creating his own evolved species. On the other hand, The War of the Worlds places humans in the middle position, not a at the top. " (McConnell, 439) I'm not saying Wells was some kind of great prophet or a Nostradamus of his time, but it is something that sounds like a prediction for what is to come and what must be done to avoid and/or overcome the differences. Doctor Moreau wants to play the creator and eliminator, and bring it together in his own survival of the fittest game. Wells, from what I have read from the critics, I have come to the conclusion that Wells seems to keep a central theme of Darwinism, and societies future.
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