H.G. Wells has been branded as a novelist who betrayed his vocation. But Wells saw himself as what we would today call a public intellectual. How credible is this claim? And what happens when we look at him in this way? So typecast has Wells's reputation become that neither of these questions has been previously asked, but when we look at Wells as a thinker we find a whole new quality to his later works, which have invariably been dismissed by literary scholars as of low quality or even not worth reading. In particular, Wells's prescience as a prophet of our current environmental problems stands out - for example, he foresaw anthropogenic climate change as early as 1931. Popular conceptions of Wells as racist, imperialist and eugenicist are also challenged. What emerges is a new perspective on a significant public intellectual and- pioneering prophet of the twenty-first century.
| ISBN: | 9781837645114 |
| Publication date: | 30th October 2023 |
| Author: | Bill Cooke |
| Publisher: | Liverpool University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 272 pages |
| Series: | Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 History of ideas Ethical issues: scientific, technological and medical developments Social forecasting, future studies Western philosophy from c 1800 Social and political philosophy Buddhism Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Political ideologies and movements |