by David C. Smith |
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H.G. Wells, like Shakespeare, will become a man recreated every generation. At the same time, in the nineteen-thirties, as a popular reference book called Wells "a man who made his home in Utopia", Wells presented himself in EXPERIMENT IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY as "a very ordinary brain". Socialists of all persuasions, from the Fabians in the nineteen-hundreds to Orwell during the Second World War criticized him - the Fabians for being too fiery, Lenin as being too middle class, Orwell as an anachronism. Yet Wells went on undeterred in his materialism. In the nineteen-sixties Colin Wilson found quotations in Wells that seemed a precursor of his own metaphysics. In the 'seventies more biographical material started to appear, especially dealing with Wells and women. It is this liberal, proto-feminist Wells that David Smith is principally concerned with, but another new Wells has already appeared - in the latest issue of New Scientist magazine (i.e. late 1988) there is an approving reconsideration of Wells' early work as a science crammer. This H.G. Wells was a forerunner of Kenneth Baker on the curriculum. The tendency of H.G. WELLS: DESPERATELY MORTAL is to present Wells as a liberal, while calling him a socialist, a feminist, sociologist more concerned with the soft than the hard sciences (though it is no more than a tendency). However, it does lead to one or two contradictions - from Anticipations in 1901 Wells was saying that birth control was one of the necessary conditions of women's liberation, nevertheless he seems to have fathered two legitimate and five illegitimate children, which suggests that Wells himself did not bother to get involved in his companion's problems or that he engaged in illicit intercourse so frequently that the chances against were lost in the torrent. Also, since Wells attacked people by name as abusing womanisers (Hubert Bland, for instance) in his EXPERIMENT, it makes him out to be a hypocrite. And, as a minor criticism of Professor Smith's detail he never tells us what contraception Wells used, although he discusses Wells and birth control several times. In contrast, Wells discusses his parents' birth control in his EXPERIMENT. The book is not strictly chronological, but devotes some chapters to a period - early life, professional author, world statesman. Each period ends with a chapter summing up the themes of Wells' life in that period, and if you don't know that it's coming as I did not for some time it seems as if detail is missing. Also, Smith seems to regard some themes as continuing while others are dropped. So Wells and literature gets one early summary chapter but Wells and women get two spaced chapters. Wells is an author worth studying, but this biography is not written to emphasise his contribution to science fiction. On the other hand, if you are interested in Joanna Russ or Ursula LeGuin you will find Wells presented as their ally. The book comes with 120 pages of notes but without a complete bibliography. It will not endure, I think, because of the constant recreation of Wells but it will challenge many readers to reconsider not only Wells and his achievement, but all his aspirations as well - how far they have been achieved and how far they should be worked for or resisted.
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Note: Kenneth Baker, referred to, was Minister of Education in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, who began specifying a National Curriculum. Time allocated to teacher training now known as Inset Days were known for many years as Baker Days.
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© L J Hurst 2009