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War of the Worlds and other Science Fiction Classics

2012H.G. Wells

4.7/5

It is apparent after reading this collection why H.G. Wells is revered as one of the founding fathers of science fiction. However, as with any short story collection, some stories are more successful than others.The Time Machine: As a short story, this is probably the most complete. It captures well HG Wells' concerns about humanity, commercialism, knowledge, etc. through a thoroughly engaging story.The Island of Dr. Moreau: The worst story in the collection by far, this builds off the hubbub surrounding Darwin's theories and foreshadows genetic engineering. However, the science is so faulty that it is hard to get past the ridiculousness.War of the Worlds: The first half the story is much more successful than the second, and it has a bit of Dickensian miraculousness at the end, but the aliens he creates in the story are surprisingly non-humanoid, and he does get into the challenges of an alien invasion. The invasion is a pretty stupendous read - I just didn't feel like it kept the momentum going very well.First Men in the Moon: This is the flip side of War of the Worlds for me, telling the story of a human invasion. The science behind how they achieve space travel is absolutely unusual and fascinating, and while physically it doesn't really make sense, it is just a conceptually elegant and wacky idea...in some ways, science fiction at its best. The aliens are in many ways less interesting to me than those of War of the Worlds, but the concepts of communication are expanded upon much more. He also really goes after some of the consumerism/scientism battles that feature in The Time Machine and Food of the Gods. The multiple, episodic endings wore on me a bit, but it was still a fun read.Food of the Gods: This foretells the challenges of genetically modified foods or synthetic biology and, in general, what happens when technology can get ahead of the scientists who create it. It also deals with government intervention, how scientists differ from both engineers and the human race (although a bit of a narrow, cliche look), and all sorts of other social stuff in addition to the sci-fi angle. Unfortunately, the implications of the technology aren't that great (kind of as bad as Dr. Moreau), but all of the stuff around it is interesting.Overall, I definitely recommend reading some of his works, especially First Men in the Moon and The Time Machine. It's fascinating to see how forward-thinking some of this stuff really was.
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