Tag Archive: H. G. Wells


Hidden abuse and the invisible man

Filed under: Gender, Movies — Leave a comment
March 22, 2020

THE INVISIBLE MAN directed by Leigh Whannell (USA, 2020)
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Following the welcome conviction of Harvey Weinstein and the exposure of simlar abuses prompted by the #metoo movement, movie-makers are treading on eggshells when it comes to depicting modern relationships. Unsurprisingly, there are noticeably fewer scenes of physical and psychological violence.

Many will welcome this trend, but it does not mean that the problem has magically gone away. Far from it, cases of gaslighting, domestic assaults and femicide feature all too prominantly in the media every day. The impression you get is that Weinstein’s litany of abuse was just the tip of a very unpleasant iceberg. Continue reading →

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THE BOOK I READ : KIPPS

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Politics — Leave a comment
July 17, 2014

The third in a series of 13 book reviews I wrote in my pre-blogging years.

 KIPPS – The Story of a Simple Soul by H.G. Wells (1905)

kippsThe excellence of this novel is not sustained to the end. Book III (Kippses) comes as quite a disappointment with its excursion into the domestic problems of the newlyweds (Anne & Kipps). Other events like the birth of their son are merely sketched in as the story drifts towards an anti-climatic conclusion.

Books I and II are, however, quite wonderful. Firstly, the plight of Kipps as he is forced into a dead-end job and sent out into the world in a state of complete innocence are superbly described.

Wells’ touches of irony are almost always effective, for example he describes the pitifully short amount of leisure time Kipps has at the end of the day as follows: “the rest of the day was entirely at his disposal for reading, recreation and the improvement of his mind”.

The confused dreams of Kipps are very believable. He, for instance, longs to be more learned but knows nothing about books, It is another irony that at the end of the novel he acquires a bookshop.

If confusion without money is bad enough, confusion with a windfall of £1200 a year proves to be just as bad. One feels for Kipps as he struggles to learn the “manners and rules of good society” and is taken advantage of by the so-called respectable classes. Continue reading →

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HOW SOON IS NOW?

Filed under: Books — Leave a comment
November 29, 2013

THE CONQUEST OF TIME by H.G. Wells (Watts & Co, 1942)

In 1929, H.G. Wells’ First And Last Things was the first volume of the Thinker’s Library and The Conquest Of Time (vol.92) was written to replace it as a “a compacter and austerer book than its progenitor”.

In the revised version, Wells asks the question “whether Time is getting the better of us or we are getting the better of time”.

Published in 1942, the fact that it first appeared in the middle of WWII adds a sense of urgency and even mild panic over reflections on the nature of the individual’s role in society and our relationship with death.

Wells writes grimly: “Human beings are transitory. The mind rebels naturally and very readily against the tyranny of dead persons”. With the war raging, questions about whether the human species would endure and if so, in what form were not just academic enquiries but based on very real fears.

In Chapter IX ‘After-Man’, he tries to find some glimmer of hope in a dire situation: “Much of what is happening in the world now is hideous, dismaying, cruel and shameful; it is a vivid storm of elimination, yet it is not a biological catastrophe”.

The implicit hope is that conflict between nations may prove to be the wake-up call mankind needs and that joy will come out of the sorrow. It must have seemed over optimistic when it was written and still does more than seven decades later.

 

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