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The empire of the future: imperialism and modernism in H. G. Wells.

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From: Studies in the Novel
Date: 20060322
Author:Cantor, Paul A.; Hufnagel, Peter

H. G. Wells's scientific romances of the 1890s are remarkably innovative in form and subject matter, and the first in the series, The Time Machine, may be the most original of them all. It virtually inaugurated the genre of science fiction, and has been shamelessly imitated by aspiring authors in the field ever since. And yet as forward-looking as Wells's first novel is, it is deeply rooted in the Victorian era. As we shall see, in The Time Machine, he takes us 800,000 years into the future, and he finds the Victorian class system still intact. Its extremes have of course been ...

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