Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
12-2004
Publisher
Praeger
Abstract
In his summary of the contemporary reviews of The War of the Worlds (1898), William J. Scheick notes that their extensive number suggests that readers now recognized that Wells was an emerging writer whom they could not ignore. "There were, again," Scheick notes, "reservations about slipshod style, hasty plotting, vulgar content and cheap effects; but these doubts were overrun by the general verdict that this romance was one of the most ingenious stories of the year and the best work to date of an author who was one of the most original of the younger English novelists" (Scheick 5). Earlier reviewers had angered Wells by comparing him to Jules Verne and to Rudyard Kipling, implying that he was something of a disciple to the two writers. In this latest novel he had again moved beyond Verne in his use of science; as we shall see, and as was missed by many of the contemporary reviewers, he had also moved far beyond Kipling in his implied critique of British colonial policies.
Chapter of
Flashes of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from The War of the Worlds Centennial, Nineteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Editor
David Ketterer
Robert Philmus
Recommended Citation
Hawley J. C. (2004). The War of the Worlds, Wells, and the Fallacy of Empire. In D. Ketterer and R. Philmus (Eds.), Flashes of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from The War of the Worlds Centennial, Nineteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. (pp. 43-52). Praeger.
Comments
Flashes of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the War of the Worlds Centennial, Nineteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts by David Ketterer. Copyright © 2005 by David Ketterer. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission of ABC-CLIO, LLC, Santa Barbara, CA.