Inventing Tomorrow: H. G. Wells and the Twentieth Century

By Sarah Cole ’89. H. G. Wells played a central role in defining the intellectual, political, and literary character of the twentieth century. A prolific literary innovator, he coined such concepts as “time machine,” “war of the worlds,” and “atomic bomb,” exerting vast influence on popular ideas of time and futurity, progress and decline, and humanity’s place in the universe. Yet critics and scholars have largely forgotten his accomplishments… Cole provides a definitive account of Wells’s work and ideas, contending that Wells casts new light on modernism and its values.