Megan+Kerns

=
**Source 1: ( online print)** [|**http://www.scribd.com/doc/7886653/HG-Wells-May-Be-the-Greatest-Forecaster-of-All-Times-How-Did-He-Make-His-Predictions**]The Futurist May-June 2008 =====
 * he's sometimes considered to be "father" of futurism
 * he uses the past to calculate the future's action
 * Well's fiction writing expertise do doubt provided him wtih an abiltiy to create scenarios

**Source 2: (web)** Merriman, C.D."The Literature Netwark" [|**http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/**] The Literature Network, 2007.

 * Topic: War of the Worlds**
 * the story is set in the early 20th century. The "well-known astronomer" named Ogilvy, he witnessed an explosion on the surface of the planet Mars
 * disgorging the Martians: bulky, tentacled creatures that begin setting up strange machinery in the cylinder's impact crater
 * After the attack, the narrator takes his wife to Leatherhead to stay with realatives until the Martians are killed
 * When the narator is returning home, he sees the first hand of what the Martians were assembling; towering three-legged "fighring machines", which are armed with heat-rays and a chemcial weapon:"the black smoke"
 * Later, this was made into a broadcast, which everyone thought was real and started freaking out and worrying
 * Years later, it was made into 2 movies. The original in 1953 and the remake in 2005. Most people like the 1953 version


 * Source 3: (web)** Merriman, C.D. "The Literature Network" [] The Literature Network, 2007
 * Topic: H.G Wells**
 * "Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our mind as ours are as those to the beasts that parish intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twenth century came the great disillusionment" Ch.1
 * Wells was an english author, futurist, essayist, historian, socialist, and teacher wrote //The War of the Worlds// (1898)
 * The popular novel foreshadowed things to come for the human race; robotics, World Wars, warfare tactics including aerial bombing
 * While his most popular works tend to show a bleak future for humanity, he was not without his sardonic and wry wit
 * "Everytime I see and adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the human race" H.G Wells
 * Well's is often credited along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verns as being one of the fathers of science fiction
 * The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll (1896; "Thus even in a shop assistant does the warmth of manhood assert itself....against the councsels of prudence and the restrictions of his means, to seek the wholesome delights of exertion and danger and pain." ch 1
 * The Invisible Man (1897); "The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, though a biting wind and a driving snow....He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself agaisnt his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to teh burden he carried." Ch. 1.
 * A Modern Utopia was published in 1905; "Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him." Ch. 5.


 * Source 3: (web)** [] No publish date
 * The influence from Wells is still with us today. His literary blockbusters The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The First Men in the Moon are still practically household names today
 * Wells wrote more words than Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare combined
 * He believed the keys to mankind’s long-term survival were education and a disciplined application of science to matters that benefited everyone
 * Wells is also known for his stance on women’s suffrage and was perhaps the most effective male voice for early feminism
 * Devoted readers of H.G. Wells are used to him destroying the world in one way or another in some of his fiction.
 * Wellsians around the world were especially horrified by the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the total destruction in New York of the World Trade Center
 * For him the fictional destruction of civilization was meant as the same meaning of the end
 * It gave mankind pause to reflect on his failed stewardship of his fellow men and home planet, and provided a precious opportunity to re-organize a new world sanely and equitably
 * Separate countries, they didn't just try to figure ways to defend themselves from each other in the future, Mankind as a whole sought to rework the very fabric of society so to make war as impossible as itself
 * 1916 he had published "Mr. Britling Sees It Through", a fantastic work that traces the devastating impact of the First World War on a sensitive and common British man with his family and friends


 * Source 4: (online print)** [|**http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1900709.ece**] Neil Gaiman 2007
 * His short stories, and proto-science fiction novels, are still read today
 * Many of the mainstream novels he considered more important and significant are gone and, for the most part, forgotten, perhaps because the novels were very much of their time
 * Some of the science fiction and fantasy novels and tales are, for all their late Victorian or Edwardian setting, quite timeless
 * Wells himself said of his short stories: “I make no claims for them and no apology; they will be read as long as people read them. Things written either live or die . . .”
 * Of all the things one can say about his stories, to my mind unquestionably the best is this: long after they were written, they live
 * The most successful Wells short stories are not what we today would view as stories
 * At the end of most of Wells short stories, the world is unchanged, and yet it could have been changed utterly and irrevocably.
 * They are journalism: carnivorous octopuses come, eat and return to the English Channel in a tale that feels like an article from a turn-of-the-century scientific paper, while the ants, armed with poison, conclude their tale 50 years away from arriving in Europe
 * It’s not a weakness – indeed, it’s where these stories derive a significant amount of their power and effect.


 * Source 5: (online print)** [|**http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,880924,00.html**] no publish date
 * H. G. Wells has felt the necessity for a new approach to his rostrum, an impressive, unpoliced approach that will at once command unusual attention and leave him freer than ever to expatiate upon the human spectacle
 * Moreover, history is but the gradient leading up to Mr. Wells' deepest concern, the future of mankind after its scientific emancipation
 * In his pseudo-scientific novels, several of which he laid in that far future, he felt the cramp of plot and character relations
 * One of his mottos is "all things change"
 * His immensely popular novels were never without strong social implications and to a host of readers, Wells became a ethical guide as well as an interpreter of science
 * The significance is that Wells has before this enraged the scientist and excited the layman. This time he bids fair to dismay more laymen than he excites
 * At 29 he started publishing the threescore books whose titles now require nearly a column of fine Who's Who type
 * His book "Mr. Britling Sees It Through" was probably as great a patriotic contribution as Britain received from any individual during the war
 * Since the War his writing was somewhat sobersided, tending toward the purely educational
 * From a philosophical point of view, Wells appears once more in his familiar role of a gentle little man gesturing wildly on the edge of a cliff over which he lacks either wit or courage to leap alone


 * Source 6: (web)** [|**http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2340178/hg_wells_the_father_of_science_fiction.html?cat=37**] no publish date
 * He was able to look years ahead and write about technologies that were not even theories during the time
 * In The Island of Dr. Moureau published in 1896, he predicted genetic engineering. It wasn't until 1953 when two scientists showed that DNA could be used to pass genetic information
 * In //The War of the Worlds//, published in 1898, he wrote about lasers but laser theroy wasn't proved possible until 1928.
 * In 1901 he wrote about a lunar landing in the novel //The First Men on the Moon.// A lunar landing didn't happen until 1969.
 * In //The World Set Free,// published in 1914, he predicted the use of some atomic bombs that exploded continuously using radioactivity. The atomic bomb wasn't invented until the 1940s
 * He imagined wireless telephones and voice mail n his 1923 book, //Men Like Gods.//
 * In 1933, //The Shape of Things to Come//, in this book he predicted a second war and that Europe would fight a notch themselves and eventually bringing in various other countries until we have a world war. The World War didn't officially begin until September 1939.
 * In the 1899 book, //When the Sleeper Wakes//, he described the first automatic sliding door. The very first automatic sliding door was created in 1960 by the Horton Door Company.


 * Source 7: (web)** [|**http://www.life123.com/arts-culture/cinema/science-fiction/father-of-science-fiction.shtml**] no publish date
 * H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were the fathers of science fiction
 * H.G. Wells is a link between Jules Verne and the modern 20th century science fiction
 * //The War of the Worlds// helped popularize aliens and science fiction, H.G. Wells was the most influential science fiction writer
 * His books also talked about social concerns such as class struggle and genetic engineering.
 * Many of his books were turned into movies.
 * H.G. Wells was more than a science-fiction writer, though; his books touched on important themes and concerns in modern society
 * "The Time Machine" dealt with class struggle
 * "The Island of Dr. Moreau" touched on the abominations that advances in science and medical technology could produce
 * Wells' books also feature attempts to define humanity and portray the ongoing struggle of the human race
 * These concerns remained valid during the World Wars and subsequent post-modern cultural and social struggles


 * Source 8: (web)** [|**http://www.sff.net/people/james.van.pelt/wells/biography.htm**] no publish date
 * His parents thought he would be a shopkeeper or worker
 * He worked in a drug store and studied biology. This probably influenced his writings about genetic engineering.
 * The works of Jules Verne also inspired him to write

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Ian Ousby (1993)
 * Source 9: (online print)** [|**http://great-writers.suite101.com/article.cfm/hg_wells_and_scifi**]
 * His college tutor, **Thomas Huxley**, taught him about the famous Darwin's theory of evolution which states that animals evolve in response to changes in their environment. H.G. Wells wrote that theme into his books.
 * Wells had great faith in the potential of science and technology to solve the problems of the human race.
 * But later in life he began to feel that human beings had become too selfish and cruel in their use of technology
 * He wrote over 80 stories and novels. Some of these were science fiction (highly influenced by [|**Jules Verne**]), and some were novels about political and social ideas.
 * Wells became a full-time writer when he was 29 years old, after an accident that damaged his kidneys. Prior, he worked as a bookkeeper, schoolteacher, and journalist.


 * Source 10: (online print)** [|**http://ceoworld.biz/ceo/2009/09/21/google-celebrated-hg-wells-father-of-science-fiction-birthday-with-ufo doodles**]no publish date
 * In 2009, Google honored H. G. Well's 143rd birthday with a Google Doodle showing a spaceship from War of the Worlds.

> as the day when the study of the future > was born" > > **Source 12: (online print)** [|**http://www.forteantimes.com/features/profiles/122/hg_wells.html**] no publish date
 * Source 11: (online print)** [|**http://www.wnrf.org/cms/hgwells.shtml**] no publish date
 * H.G. Wells is refered to as the founder of future studies
 * " It is not far-fetched to fix January 24, 1902
 * "The importance of H.G. Wells to the development of future studies lies not only in what he wrote, but in his influence on later thinkers. Historian and futurist W. Warren Wagar reviews the range of Wells's contributions to the discipline of future thinking."
 * "Wells wove the strands of earlier futurism into a single body of work,more than 100 volumes in all, publishedover a span of more than 50 years."
 * "Wells's most serious shortcoming was one that many of us share; heoften let wishful thinking overshadow his common sense"
 * He anticipated, campaigned for, and in his way helped to create the League of Nations in 1918-19. When he realized how little power the new League would have, he promptly repudiated it as a travesty of world government, "a blind alley for good intentions . . . a weedy dump for all the weaknesses of European liberalism."
 * During the Second World War, he tried again to make a new world order a goal of Allied policy. The only concrete result of his labors was a declaration of human rights issued by a committee of public figures under his chairmanship
 * Another reference to being the father of modern science fiction
 * His works caused him to be a big celebrity in his time
 * His 1893 essay "The Man of the Year Million" created an image of a future man that other authors borrowed.
 * This amateurish and poorly titled work, starring a mysterious ‘Dr Moses Nebogipfel', was his first stab at The Time Machine.
 * When it came to his unfinished serial fiction The Chronic Argonauts, Wells went to the length of buying up and destroying the back issues of the Science Schools Journal where its three instalments appeared in 1888
 * One stroke of luck was that his popular-science article "The Rediscovery of the Unique", though not very enthusiastically received by the editor of the Fortnightly Review, however impressed another contributor who felt and insisted that it should be published. The name of the secret benefactor: Oscar Wilde
 * His first truly influential publication as a pop-science writer was the 1893 essay "The Man of the Year Million", which introduced that potent SF image of a far-future man with his overdeveloped head, eyes and brain perched on top of a shrunken, atrophied body – the ultimate Darwinian triumph of couch-potato over jock