JOURNALISM AND PROPHECY: An Anthology of H.G. Wells

by W. Warren- Ed. Wager ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

The late, near-great H.G. Wells had an opinion about absolutely everything and, indeed, late in life propounded the founding of a World Encyclopedia amassed by thousands of scholars. He began his literary career as a science-fiction hack, and then famous friends (Henry James, Joseph Conrad) persuaded him to write ""serious"" novels, which he did. But he had hardly gained international fame with these when he became disaffected with art, and an intense polemicist, he published over a hundred books. These pieces collected here, all tending toward an integrated world civilization, are form the eternity dustbin and many don't belong there. Of particular interest are his pen portraits of famous men he'd met and usually argued with: Conrad, James, Shaw, Corky, Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lenin, Stalin, Churchill Hitlor, et. dl. His description of Charles de Gaulle (1943) is especially full of acid. He found Shaw's ideas flimsy and lacking in fact and the Life Force a silly fiction, perhaps as bad as his own romances. In 1914 Wells cerily forecast the atomic bomb and the world's near destruction by it in 1959. Time has proven him partially wrong, but he is hardly to be written off. The anthology has a definite curiosity oum comparison value.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION