HG Wells photo by George Charles Beresford.
Herbert george wells He died on August 13, 1946 in London. I had 79 years and he was a historian, philosopher, and possibly the most famous English writer of science fiction novels, forerunner of the genre. We have all read some of his works and if not, we have seen them in the innumerable film adaptations that have been made over the years.
Today I remember this classic of the genre with some phrases from 4 of his novels best known: The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau y The invisible man. I also review those film adaptations.
HG Wells
Born in Bromley, in Kent County, he was the third son of a lower-middle-class family who cared that they had a good education.
When a accident He forced him to stay in bed for a while, he took the opportunity to read a lot, which led him to want to write. Then he contracted the tuberculosis and he devoted himself fully to writing. He was very prolific and all his work is influenced by his profound political convictions.
He advocated that science and education they would be the two fundamental pillars of the society of the future in which the human being would take a momentous leap.
En 1895 published The time Machine, first as a series and later as a book and its <strong>success</strong> it was immediate. From there he chained them. That same year he also published The wonderful visit, and in the following three years three novels that increased his prestige: The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man y War of the Worlds.
The time Machine
- A natural law that we forget is that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger and restlessness ... Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need for change. Only animals with intelligence have to cope with a huge variety of needs and dangers.
- Strength is the result of need; safety establishes a prize for weakness.
- Perhaps learning to operate the machine of daring, to travel instantly to the limits of immediate life, to found from time to time a brief paradise without future or past, without the double blackmail of nostalgia and fear.
- You cannot move in any way in time, you cannot run away from the present moment.
Possibly the most famous film adaptation of this story (and the favorite) is the one that starred Rod Taylor en 1960 and that it won the Oscar for the best special effects. The last one was from 2002 and starred Guy Pierce and Jeremy Irons.
War of the Worlds
- During the day we are so busy with our poor affairs that it seems impossible to us for someone up there to watch our steps and, painstakingly and methodically, plan the conquest of planet Earth. Only the night is capable, with its darkness and its silence, of creating the conditions so that the Martians, the Selenites and other beings that inhabit the universe, have a place in our imagination.
- What good is religion if it ceases to exist in the face of calamities?
- Until then I did not understand that I was there helpless and alone. Suddenly, like something falling off me, fear seized me.
- It is possible that the invasion of the Martians will be, at last, beneficial for us; at least it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future, which is the surest source of decadence.
What to say about the well-known radio broadcast What did Orson Welles of this novel on October 30, 1938? It was a theatrical adaptation, of an hour, counted in newscast form last minute. It so penetrated the audience that everyone believed real that alien invasion. It has remained as a radio moment as historical as it is unrepeatable. And film adaptations have not been able to overcome it.
The most classic, which won the Oscar for visual effects, was from 1953. And the most current one was the one starring Tom Cruise in 2005. .
The Island of Doctor Moreau
- An animal may be fierce and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.
- I have never heard of something useless that, sooner or later, evolution has not banished from existence. And you? And pain is not necessary.
- Animals can be very cunning and ferocious, but only a man is capable of lying.
- The fact that these creatures were really nothing more than savage monsters, mere grotesque parodies of the human species, made me vaguely uneasy as to what they would be capable of, far worse than any definite terror.
I am left with the classic from the 70s that they starred in Burt Lancaster and Michael York in 1977. But there is also the one that was made almost 20 years later with Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer.
The invisible man
- Big and strange ideas that transcend experience often have less effect on men and women than small, more tangible considerations.
- All men, even the most educated, have something superstitious about them.
- I alone, it is incredible how little a man can do alone! Steal a little, do a little damage, and that's where it ends.
- I am quite a strong man and I have a heavy hand; Besides, I am invisible. There is no doubt that he could kill them both and escape with ease, if he wanted to. They agree?
And of this I also take the great Claude rains that made the face and body visible to the protagonist in the classic of 1933. But there are also tributes and variations on titles like The man Without a shadow, with Kevin Bacon in 2000. And especially, a seventies series from my childhood to which I have great affection for how much I liked it Ben murphy, its protagonist.
Which one to keep?
Hard choise. So the best thing to do is read (or watch) any of Wells's stories.