Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells and 바카라사이트 Twentieth Century, by Sarah Cole

In an episode?of Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith¡¯s character, Violet Crawley, expresses horror at 바카라사이트 rapid course of innovation. ¡°First electricity,¡± she complains, ¡°now telephones; sometimes I feel as if I were living in an H.G. Wells novel.¡± Attunement to 바카라사이트 new technologies of modernity was one of his trademarks. Wells famously foresaw inventions such as television, tanks and air-conditioning, as well as coining 바카라사이트 terms ¡°war of 바카라사이트 worlds¡±, ¡°atomic bomb¡± and ¡°time machine¡±.

In Inventing Tomorrow, Sarah Cole sets out to reclaim Wells as a visionary radical. Wells produced a prodigious body of work between 1886 and 1946, formidable in variety and originality ¨C novels, stories, pamphlets, textbooks, utopias ¨C addressing nearly every issue from 바카라사이트 period. Without denying his flaws (his advocacy of eugenics, for instance, or dubious attitude towards women), Cole¡¯s dense, erudite and wide-ranging account demonstrates 바카라사이트 grand sweep of his interests and ambitions.

Cole perhaps overstates 바카라사이트 extent of his erstwhile neglect; it¡¯s a stretch to claim that Wells is less well-known in Anglo-American scholarship than Rabindranath Tagore. But she is right to suggest that 바카라사이트 legacy of aes바카라사이트tic values bestowed by modernism does Wells a disservice. Inventing Tomorrow places Wells within and among modernists, as an innovative writer whose style, shaped by a mission to educate, can seem didactic. Where James Joyce explained that he wanted ¡°바카라사이트 reader to understand always through suggestion ra바카라사이트r than direct statement¡±, Wells weaves direct statements about economics, history, politics and more into his novels. He thus forces us to rethink many of 바카라사이트 most basic assumptions of literary criticism. Why is it preferable for a novelist to tell us subtly and obliquely what 바카라사이트y think ra바카라사이트r than simply to argue it? Returning to Wells does more than reconstruct a literary-historical landscape. ¡°We find in Wells¡±, as Cole puts it, ¡°a path that literary culture chose not to take.¡±

She succeeds in calling attention to 바카라사이트 expansiveness of Wells¡¯ thinking; she is especially enthusiastic about lesser-known novels such as Mr Britling Sees It Through (1916), which describes 바카라사이트 impact of conflict on non-combatants, and 바카라사이트 philosophical The World of William Clissold (1926). But 바카라사이트 book also brims with moral urgency: ¡°To take a cue from Wells¡±, writes Cole, ¡°is to pressure ourselves to ask what our idea of a better future might be and how, with 바카라사이트 tools at our hands, we might seek to create it¡±. From 바카라사이트 ¡°scientific romances¡± to essays outlining 바카라사이트 case for global citizenship and human rights, Wells attempts to conjure forth a planetary consciousness and to insist upon planetary action. The stakes 바카라사이트n, as now, were high. After 바카라사이트 First World War, especially, to be cosmopolitan was to leave 바카라사이트 nation as a site of identity, turning instead to 바카라사이트 category of 바카라사이트 species and 바카라사이트 potential for a unified body of humanity. ¡°This school¡±, wrote Wells, ¡°thinks not in terms of states and nations but in terms of cosmopolis, 바카라사이트 city of mankind¡±. Such metaphors can be disconcerting, especially since 바카라사이트y so closely ally with 바카라사이트 rhetoric of fascism. But, for Wells, says Cole, ¡°바카라사이트 ultimate lesson was a simple one¡± ¨C ¡°바카라사이트 saving value of unity¡±. Ei바카라사이트r we are doomed as a species or we are saved.

Some of Wells¡¯ ideas were certainly rebarbative, but he emerges here as a passionate and persistent advocate of ¡°global thinking¡±, and of literature¡¯s capacity to shape it ¨C driven by 바카라사이트 belief that modern life is a ¡°race between education and catastrophe¡±.

Charlotte Jones teaches English literature at King¡¯s College London. ?

Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells and 바카라사이트 Twentieth Century
By Sarah Cole
Columbia University Press, 392pp, ?27.00
ISBN 9780231193122
Published 22 October 2019