Introduction
Herbert George Wells was born in 1866 in Bromley, England into a family where there was little money to spare; his father ran a small shop and played cricket professionally and his mother worked as a housekeeper. The family's financial situation meant that Wells had to work from the age of fourteen to support himself through education. His success at school won him a free place to study at a college of science in London, after which he became a science teacher. His poor health made life difficult, though, and he struggled to keep his full-time job while trying to write in his spare time. He married twice. His first wife was Isabel Mary Wells, but the marriage was not a success. Three years later he left her for Amy Catherine Robbins, a former pupil. Wells often criticised the institution of marriage, and he had relationships with several other women, the most important being the writer Rebecca West. By 1895 Wells had become a full-time writer and lived comfortably from his work. He travelled a lot and kept homes in the south of France and in London, where he died in 1946. Wells wrote about 40 works of fiction and collections of stories; many books and shorter works on political, social and historical matters; three books for children, and one about his own life. His most important early works established him as the father of science fiction and it is for these books that he is remembered. Best known are The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898) and The First Men in the Moon (1901). In all these works he shows a remarkable imagination. He seemed to have the ability to make intelligent guesses about future scientific developments; he described travel underwater and by air, for example, at a time when such journeys seemed to be pure fiction.
Wells began to realise that his science fiction, although highly successful, was not about the lives of real people, and the subject matter of his later works of fiction is rooted in a world of which he had personal experience. Love and Mr Lewisham (1900) tells the story of a struggling teacher. The History of Mr Polly (1910) describes the adventures of a shopkeeper who frees himself from his work by burning down his own shop and running away to start a new life. In these and other books he shows a sympathetic interest in, and understanding for, the lives of ordinary people that were rarely present in fiction at the time. One of Wells's most successful works is Tono-Bungay (1909), a story of dishonesty and greed involving the production and sale of a medicine that, for a time, brings wealth and respect to its inventor. , For centuries storytellers have been interested in the idea of invisible beings, with all the related possibilities and dangers. Wells's interest in the subject is from a scientific rather than a magical point of view, and he uses the main character in The Invisible Man to put across his message that scientific progress can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Apart from the idea of invisibility, the rest of the book is very realistic. It is set in a real place known to Wells; the characters are ordinary and believable. All of this makes the less believable central idea easier to accept. Much of the book is written with a light, humorous touch, but it becomes more serious as the story develops. The story begins on a snowy winter's day in the village of Iping. A mysterious stranger arrives at the Coach and Horses Inn, wrapped up from head to foot so that no part of his body is visible. The lady of the inn, Mrs Hall, is pleased to have a guest at this time of year, but her pleasure turns to doubt and finally to fear as she discovers her strange visitor's secret. When he begins to make trips out of the inn, the people of the village and surrounding area are affected by the appearance and behaviour of the Invisible Man and they connect his presence with robberies and strange events in the area. It is the scientist, Dr Kemp, who the Invisible Man turns to for help and understanding, and who learns the secret of the strange man's invisibility. When the Invisible Man finds that he was wrong to have trusted Kemp, his actions become wilder and more violent and it is clear that the story will not end happily. VI
ความคิดเห็นทั้งหมด ()
กรุณาเข้าสู่ระบบเพื่อแสดงความคิดเห็น