When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700--and everything has changed.In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony.The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings--unearth their secret and then retum to his own time--until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen.H.G. Well's famous novel of one man's astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895.It won him immediate recognition,...

Suitable for students and teachers dealing with government, science, and the contemporary dilemma of a world facing war, famine, and racial unrest, this title makes a sober attempt to imagine what kind of society men would create if they really used their heads and worked at it.

The Sleeper Awakes is H. G. Wells's wildly imaginative story of London in the twenty-second century and the man who by accident becomes owner and master of the world. In 1897 a Victorian gentleman falls into a sleep from which he cannot be waked. During his two centuries of slumber he becomes the Sleeper, the most well known and powerful person in the world. All property is bequeathed to the Sleeper to be administered by a Council on his behalf. The common people, increasingly oppressed, view the Sleeper as a mythical liberator whose awakening will free them from misery. The Sleeper awakes in...

"From nearly two hundred centres, and every week added to their number, roared the unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs. The flimsy fabric of the world's credit had vanished, industry was completed disorganised, and every city, every thickly populated area was starving or trembled on the verge of starvation. Most of the capital cities of the world were burning; millions of people had already perished, and over great areas government was at an end." The Last War erupts in Europe, rapidly escalating from bloody trench warfare and vicious aerial duels into a world-consuming,...

A comet rushes toward the earth, a deadly, glowing orb that soon fills the sky and promises doom. But mankind is too busy hating, stealing, scheming, and killing to care. As luminous green trails of cosmic dust and vapor stream across the heavens, blood flows beneath: nations wage all-out war, bitter strikes erupt, and jealous lovers plot revenge and murder. The earth slips past the comet by the narrowest of margins, but all succumb to the gases in its tail. When mankind wakes up, everyone is completely and profoundly different. In the Days of the Comet is H. G. Wells's classic tale of the...

At the beginning of the twentieth century the invention of the airplane revolutionizes warfare and precipitates a devastating world war. Nations race to build armadas of airships; cities across the globe are bombed; flying navies clash above the Alps and India. The United States is invaded from the east and the west. German and American airships duel over the Atlantic, and New York is bombarded by German flying machines. Confederation of Eastern Asia airships soar above the Rockies, soon engaging in deadly dogfights with the German air fleet above Niagara Falls. In The War in the Air, the...

Something is horribly wrong in the remote English village of Cainsmarsh. An elderly woman stiffens in dread at her own shadow; a terrified farmer murders a scarecrow; food prepared by others is eyed with suspicion; family pets are bludgeoned to death; loving couples are devoured by rage and violence. A spirit-corrupting evil pervades the land, infesting the minds of those who call Cainsmarsh home. Is this vision real, or a paranoid fantasy generated by an even darker, worldwide threat? And is the call to resist the danger itself a danger? These are questions that disturb the calm of an...

A gripping and entertaining tale of terror and suspense as well as a potent Faustian allegory of hubris and science run amok, The Invisible Man endures as one of the signature stories in the literature of science fiction. A brilliant scientist uncovers the secret to invisibility, but his grandiose dreams and the power he unleashes cause him to spiral into intrigue, madness, and murder. The inspiration for countless imitations and film adaptations, The Invisible Man is as remarkable and relevant today as it was a hundred years ago. As Arthur C. Clarke points out in his...

Why do people read science fiction? In hopes of receiving such writing as this a ravishingly accurate vision of things unseen; an utterly unexpected yet necessary beauty. So says Ursula K. Le Guin in her Introduction to The First Men in the Moon, H. G. Wells s 1901 tale of space travel. Heavily criticized upon publication for its fantastic ideas, it is now justly considered a science fiction classic.
Cavor, a brilliant scientist who accidentally produces a gravity-defying substance, builds a spaceship and, along with the materialistic Bedford, travels to the moon. The coldly...

Ursula K. Le Guin's selection of twenty-six stories showcases H. G. Wells's genius and reintroduces readers to his singular talent for making the unbelievable seem utterly plausible.

He envisioned a sky filled with airplanes before Orville Wright ever left the ground. He described the spectacle of space travel decades before men set foot on the moon. H. G. Wells was a visionary, a man of science with an enduring literary touch, and his originality and inventiveness are fully on display in this essential collection.

"Wells imagined both dark and bright futures...