About This Book

What an exciting prospect — to be able to go where you like, do what you want, secret and unseen. But that talent, like King Midas's golden touch, might turn out to be more of a curse than a blessing! So says every version of this story, from the original book, through Claude Raines' tormented portrayal in early film . . . right up to the films and TV series of today.

And yet . . . and yet . . .

About H. G. Wells

(1866-1946) Born in Bromley, Kent, England, Wells had an unpropitious start in life. Apprenticed to a draper when he was 14, he tried and rejected several other trades, and after finding work as a schoolmaster's assistant, he won a scholarship to study biology and graduated from London University in 1888. His best known books today are his early works of science fiction.

H.G. Wells is known as a novelist, a forceful journalist, sociologist, and historian. He was active in social issues, and worked to change 19th-century attitudes in economics and religious beliefs. His futuristic adventure stories, of which "The Time Machine," published in 1895, was the first, include "The Island of Doctor Moreau," "The Invisible Man," "The War of the Worlds," "The First Men in the Moon," and several collections of short stories. Almost all of these appeared before 1900.

In addition to science fiction, Wells later many successful novels of realistic comedy and of social commentary that were popular in their time, but have been eclipsed by the great familiar works of speculative fiction that have been immortalized in film and other media.