THE SCIENCE FICTION OF H.G. WELLS

by Frank McConnell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1980

The new Oxford series of books on science fiction has a worthy goal--serious critical studies of sf freed from the standard, literary-fiction criteria--but this seminar on Wells' speculative and utopian novels, though hard-working and well-informed, offers only the most quintessentially academic approach, heavy on socio-cultural cross-references and close textual analysis; and little of the storytelling under examination here really stands up to the heavily professorial treatment. McConnell begins with a brief biographical sketch stressing Wells' lower-middle-class background (and the belief in ""the power of Will"" that raised him above it), then moves on to Wells' responses to three major fin-de-siecle forces: his thorough assimilation of Darwinian theory, his reaction against art-for-art's-sake decadence, and his fear of the restless proletariat. And against this background McConnell proceeds book by book, from the relatively pessimistic

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Oxford Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION