Peter Haining - The H. G. Wells Scrapbook

[dem bones]

Peter Haining [ed.] - H. G. Wells Scrapbook (NEL, 1978)

Jack Williamson - Foreword
Peter Haining - Introduction

Jorge Luis Borges - The Fables of H. G. Wells
R. E. Raspe - Baron Munchausen's Trip to the Moon
Sir Humphrey Davy - A Voyage to the Planets
H. G. Wells - War Fantasies
Anon - A Tale of the Twentieth Century: For Advanced Thinkers
H. G. Wells - The Man of the Year Million
Anon - Is there Life on Mars?
Richard A. Proctor - Canals of the Planet Mars
H. P. Lovecraft - The Truth about Mars
Anon - Intelligence on Mars
Basil Copper - Ecstasy and Time Travel in Sevenoaks
A Man of Genius
P. H. Alexander - A Man who built a Real Time Machine
The Island of Dr. Moreau: A Loathsome and Repulsive Book (The Times)
Chalmers Mitchell - Cheap Horrors
H. G. Wells - Scientific Justification for The Island of Dr. Moreau?
James F. Sullivan - The Island of Professor Menu
The Prophetic Powers of Mr. Wells
The Invisible Man
The War of the Worlds
Earth Invaded by Martians
A novel of London Devastated
The War of the Wenuses
In the Wake of the Martians
Jules Castier - The Findings of Laura
The First Men in the Moon
H. G. Wlls - The Queer Story of Browlow's Newspaper
Scientific Romances
Gerald Heard - Mr. Wells' Apocalypse
Radio Listeners in Panic - War Drama Taken As Fact!
Denis Gifford - The Man who did Work Miracles; In the Movies
George Pal - Filming War of the Worlds
Wells the Science Fiction Fan!
Hugo Gernsback - Science Fiction That Endures
Mars Probe Furrows Scientists Brows
The Scientific Romances and Prophesies of H. G. Wells: A Select Guidelist

Blurb:

H.G. Wells, like the elephant described by six blind men in six different ways, lived through so many periods, showed so many dazzling facets and left such a vast and varied legacy, that it is difficult to see the whole of him. In this kaleidoscopic portrayal of the man who was not just the founding father of science fiction, but the world's first futurologist, a literary giant, cartoonist, inventor, world historian, educator, international statesman and social philosopher, Peter Haining has managed to bring together all these aspects of Wells’ multiple talents, while concentrating on his works of science fiction and fantasy.

From the publication, in 1895, of his first great novel, The Time Machine, in which he projected the whole future evolution of the human race, to the present, unabated, industry in film adaptations of Wells’ classics, he has been a continuing influence on culture and literature. Among the many fascinating items included here are a prophetic story of the 1970s that Wells wrote in the 1930s; a hilarious parody of the notorious The Island of Dr Moreau, entitled The Island of Dr Menu; an account of Orson Welles’ famous broadcast of The War of The Worlds; and a critical survey of the never-ending stream of films based on Wellsian novels and themes.

Illustrated with photographs, engravings, comic strips, film stills, cartoons, and original book-cover illustrations, The H. G. Wells Scrapbook is a glorious celebration of the towering genius and overwhelming influence of the greatest prophet of the twentieth century.

Wells' turn to receive the Haining scrapbook treatment. Includes hostile contemporary reviews of The Island of Dr. Moreau ("A loathsome and repulsive book" — The Times; "Cheap Horrors"— Chalmers Mitchell), and a parody of same, the Island of Dr. Menu, by James F. Sullivan; Basil Copper's appreciation of Wells and the genesis of Science Fiction; account of the attempt by Mr. Robert A. Paul of London to construct a time machine; H. P. Lovecraft on Mars; the London Evening Standard of November 10 1971 examines Wells' predictions of forty years ago (in The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper - was he right? Plus superb period illustrations, panels from horror and SF comic adaptations of Wells' originals, film stills and cinema posters, etc.

Wells & friend, 1886.
Frank R. Paul, Pollock and the Porrah Man, Amazing Stories, Feb. 1928.

[dem bones]

H. G.Wells - The Island of Doctor Moreau (Penguin Modern Classics, 1964)

Charles Raymond

Blurb:
H. G. Wells, the father of today's science fiction, remains unsurpassed as a creator of improbably probable situations, such as those depicted in The Island of Doctor Moreau (first published in 1896). A young naturalist, Edward Prendick, is shipwrecked, and finds himself stranded on a Pacific island, the headquarters of the sinister Doctor Moreau. Gradually Prendick realizes that Moreau, once a famous London vivisector, is carrying out his long-projected plan of `humanizing animals', moulding unfortunate beasts to the semblance of a human form. The island is populated by incredible creatures, half human, half animal; wolves, dogs, monkeys, and leopards have been transformed into Beast Men, capable of thought and speech. Moreau, his assistant Montgomery (ruled by his craving for drink), and Prendick are the only true humans on the island. And Moreau's greatest fear is that the Beast Men will one day taste blood . . .

One of Wells's earlier novels, The Island of Doctor Moreau shows his vivid imagination at full stretch and its ability to enthral and to terrify remains as potent today as it was when the book was first written.

For Copyright reasons this edition is not for sale in the U.S.A.

A Loathsome and Repulsive Book

We hesitate as to whether we ought to notice The Island of Dr Moreau by H. G. Wells at all. We know that sending a book to the Index Expurgatorius is a sure means of giving it a certain advertisement. Yet we feel bound to expostulate against a new departure which may lead we know not wither, and to give a word of warning to the unsuspecting who would shrink from the loathsome and repulsive.
This novel is the strongest example we have met in the perverse quest after anything in any shape that is freshly sensational. Suffice it to say that the most cold-blooded of vivisectors, who years before, as he confesses, has lost all sense of sympathetic pain, makes a torture hell of one of the loveliest isles in the Pacific. His vile experiments are doubly diabolical in as much as he imparts to his mangled victims so much of humanity as gives them the fullest sense of their sufferings and degradation.

The ghastly fancies are likely to haunt and cling, and so the book should be kept out of the way of young people and avoided by all who have good taste, good feeling, or feeble nerves. It is simple sacrilege to steep fair nature in the blood and antiseptics of the vivisecting anatomical theatre.

— The Times, 17 June 1896.

[helrunar]

Just imagine how that Times reviewer would have reacted to one of the discreetly charming fables of Miss Bassett Morgan. I'm not sure the person would have managed to keep sanity intact at all by the halfway mark of such a gruesome treat.

cheers, Hel.