WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.879 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are 00:00:02.879 --> 00:00:06.059 taking an incredible journey, not, you know, 00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:08.500 across space or into some terrifying future, 00:00:08.699 --> 00:00:11.220 but straight into the mind of the man who, perhaps 00:00:11.220 --> 00:00:13.599 more than any other writer, shaped the 20th century 00:00:13.599 --> 00:00:15.619 before it even arrived. That's right. We are 00:00:15.619 --> 00:00:18.899 diving deep into the life, the predictions and 00:00:18.899 --> 00:00:22.620 the magnificent contradictions of H .G. Wells. 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:25.100 And when most people hear that name, H .G. Wells, 00:00:25.339 --> 00:00:28.539 they immediately think of his towering scientific 00:00:28.539 --> 00:00:30.940 romances. You know, The Time Machine, The War 00:00:30.940 --> 00:00:32.780 of the Worlds, The Invisible Man. Of course. 00:00:32.920 --> 00:00:35.380 And they tend to pigeonhole him as simply the 00:00:35.380 --> 00:00:38.560 father of science fiction. But that label, I 00:00:38.560 --> 00:00:40.359 mean, while it's accurate, it's just far too 00:00:40.359 --> 00:00:42.829 narrow. It really is. Our mission today is to 00:00:42.829 --> 00:00:45.409 understand how we transcended that. We're investigating 00:00:45.409 --> 00:00:47.390 Wells the novelist, of course, but also Wells 00:00:47.390 --> 00:00:49.770 the relentless journalist, the ambitious historian, 00:00:50.130 --> 00:00:53.009 the revolutionary futurist, and crucially, the 00:00:53.009 --> 00:00:55.890 social critic whose ideas really laid the groundwork 00:00:55.890 --> 00:00:58.420 for modern international law. I think the surprise 00:00:58.420 --> 00:01:01.840 for you, our listener, is just how much this 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:04.799 man got right and how profoundly his vision actually 00:01:04.799 --> 00:01:08.459 impacted reality. It's so easy to focus on, you 00:01:08.459 --> 00:01:11.019 know, the Martians and the time travel. But the 00:01:11.019 --> 00:01:13.219 deeper truth is that Wells was operating on a 00:01:13.219 --> 00:01:16.040 principle that married the fantastic to the mundane. 00:01:16.180 --> 00:01:18.859 And it's that balance that gave his work its 00:01:18.859 --> 00:01:21.840 incredible predictive power. That tension, as 00:01:21.840 --> 00:01:24.299 you put it, that is the absolute core of his 00:01:24.299 --> 00:01:26.939 genius. He's sometimes called the father of science 00:01:26.939 --> 00:01:29.159 fiction, a title he shares, of course, with Jules 00:01:29.159 --> 00:01:31.799 Verne and Hugo Gernsback. Right. But Wells distinguished 00:01:31.799 --> 00:01:34.939 himself by codifying his approach into something 00:01:34.939 --> 00:01:38.400 literary critics now call Wells' Law. OK, let's 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:40.599 unpack this concept of Wells' Law, because this 00:01:40.599 --> 00:01:42.579 really feels like the fundamental intellectual 00:01:42.579 --> 00:01:45.379 engine of all his fiction. It's simple, but it's 00:01:45.379 --> 00:01:47.950 brilliant. The law states that a science fiction 00:01:47.950 --> 00:01:50.609 story must contain only a single extraordinary 00:01:50.609 --> 00:01:53.569 assumption. Just one. Just one. Think of it as 00:01:53.569 --> 00:01:56.890 a single impossible what -if. And once you introduce 00:01:56.890 --> 00:01:59.829 that one fantastic element, be it a time machine, 00:02:00.069 --> 00:02:03.049 an invisibility serum, a Martian invasion, the 00:02:03.049 --> 00:02:05.230 writer must then ensure that everything else, 00:02:05.349 --> 00:02:08.250 and this is his phrase, remains human and real. 00:02:08.469 --> 00:02:10.509 So you ground the impossible in the completely 00:02:10.509 --> 00:02:14.490 familiar. Exactly. He insisted on using touches 00:02:14.490 --> 00:02:17.949 of prosaic detail, and rigorous adherence to 00:02:17.949 --> 00:02:20.509 the hypothesis to make the impossible feel plausible. 00:02:21.099 --> 00:02:23.319 This is what made his stories feel like tomorrow's 00:02:23.319 --> 00:02:26.180 newspaper rather than, you know, some pure fantasy. 00:02:26.400 --> 00:02:28.879 It grounds the experience. And it's why a writer 00:02:28.879 --> 00:02:30.979 like Joseph Conrad, who was so deeply committed 00:02:30.979 --> 00:02:34.159 to realism, could still hail Wells as, and I 00:02:34.159 --> 00:02:35.879 love this quote, a realist of the fantastic. 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:38.580 And Wells' early training, which I know we'll 00:02:38.580 --> 00:02:40.479 get to, gave him the technical chops to make 00:02:40.479 --> 00:02:42.580 this plausible. And the payoff was just monumental. 00:02:42.719 --> 00:02:44.379 We're not just talking about literary fame. We're 00:02:44.379 --> 00:02:47.039 talking about real world influence on things 00:02:47.039 --> 00:02:51.219 like. like tanks and space travel, nuclear weapons, 00:02:51.460 --> 00:02:54.219 and even the existence of satellite television. 00:02:54.639 --> 00:02:58.300 And perhaps most astonishingly, his ideas profoundly 00:02:58.300 --> 00:03:01.280 influenced major political figures, people like 00:03:01.280 --> 00:03:03.960 Winston Churchill, and later provided the actual 00:03:03.960 --> 00:03:06.919 philosophical groundwork for the 1948 Universal 00:03:06.919 --> 00:03:09.719 Declaration of Human Rights. It's an extraordinary 00:03:09.719 --> 00:03:13.060 output for a man who began life struggling just 00:03:13.060 --> 00:03:16.840 to eat. To truly understand the global visionary, 00:03:17.159 --> 00:03:19.080 we have to look at the poverty and the intellectual 00:03:19.080 --> 00:03:21.560 struggle that forged him. Okay, let's start right 00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:23.939 at the beginning. Herbert George Wells, born 00:03:23.939 --> 00:03:27.439 in Bromley, Kent in 1866, he truly did come from 00:03:27.439 --> 00:03:30.099 the most humble origins. This was not a comfortable 00:03:30.099 --> 00:03:32.819 middle -class upbringing. Not at all. His father, 00:03:32.939 --> 00:03:35.319 Joseph Wells, was a former gardener and a professional 00:03:35.319 --> 00:03:38.060 cricketer for the Kent County team. And that 00:03:38.060 --> 00:03:39.919 cricket money was supposed to supplement the 00:03:39.919 --> 00:03:42.340 meager income from a failing shop they owned. 00:03:42.729 --> 00:03:44.469 What kind of shop was it? It was a little shop 00:03:44.469 --> 00:03:47.129 selling old china and sporting goods. But the 00:03:47.129 --> 00:03:49.009 family's financial situation was always thin, 00:03:49.090 --> 00:03:51.949 always unsteady. The shop struggled mainly because, 00:03:52.150 --> 00:03:54.409 well, the location was poor and the inventory 00:03:54.409 --> 00:03:57.590 itself was old and worn out. So constant precariousness. 00:03:57.949 --> 00:04:00.629 Constant. And that defined Wells' childhood. 00:04:01.310 --> 00:04:04.229 The situation got dramatically worse in 1877 00:04:04.229 --> 00:04:06.810 when his father broke his femur. That injury 00:04:06.810 --> 00:04:09.629 ended Joseph's cricket career completely and 00:04:09.629 --> 00:04:11.729 cut off their most reliable stream of income. 00:04:12.090 --> 00:04:14.930 Wow. And yet it seems like adversity often creates 00:04:14.930 --> 00:04:17.970 opportunity. Out of this low point came this 00:04:17.970 --> 00:04:20.769 defining incident that perhaps saved him. In 00:04:20.769 --> 00:04:23.430 1874, young Bertie, as they called him, suffered 00:04:23.430 --> 00:04:25.910 his own injury. A broken leg. He was confined 00:04:25.910 --> 00:04:28.569 to his bed, and his father, to keep him occupied, 00:04:28.829 --> 00:04:30.649 brought him a steady stream of books from the 00:04:30.649 --> 00:04:33.370 local library. And that was it. The spark. That 00:04:33.370 --> 00:04:36.240 reading experience was a seismic shift. Wells 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:38.420 later described how these books stimulated his 00:04:38.420 --> 00:04:41.019 desire to write and transported him to other 00:04:41.019 --> 00:04:44.420 worlds and lives. It was his escape hatch, mentally 00:04:44.420 --> 00:04:46.660 and spiritually, from the grinding reality of 00:04:46.660 --> 00:04:48.660 his childhood. And that grinding reality also 00:04:48.660 --> 00:04:50.800 included a highly turbulent home life, right? 00:04:50.860 --> 00:04:53.980 Oh, very. His mother, Sarah, was a devout Protestant. 00:04:54.279 --> 00:04:56.839 His father was an avowed free thinker. They argued 00:04:56.839 --> 00:04:58.860 constantly about religion and everything else. 00:04:58.879 --> 00:05:00.240 Eventually, they had to live separate lives, 00:05:00.300 --> 00:05:02.410 so they did remain married. And Wells himself 00:05:02.410 --> 00:05:04.790 suffered under the economic necessity of the 00:05:04.790 --> 00:05:07.470 time. He was shuttled into a series of these 00:05:07.470 --> 00:05:10.490 deeply unhappy, failed apprenticeships. Yes, 00:05:10.529 --> 00:05:12.889 the most notorious of which was his time as a 00:05:12.889 --> 00:05:15.850 draper's apprentice at Highs in Southsea. This 00:05:15.850 --> 00:05:19.449 was from 1880 to 1883. This sounds absolutely 00:05:19.449 --> 00:05:22.629 Dickensian. I mean, 13 -hour workdays, sleeping 00:05:22.629 --> 00:05:25.129 communally in a dormitory with other apprentices. 00:05:25.449 --> 00:05:28.110 This must have been sheer misery for him. It 00:05:28.110 --> 00:05:30.899 was essentially indentured servitude. And the 00:05:30.899 --> 00:05:33.300 key takeaway here is that these experiences weren't 00:05:33.300 --> 00:05:36.339 just biographical details. They directly fueled 00:05:36.339 --> 00:05:39.120 his social criticism. When he moved into his 00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:41.839 realist phase later on, those memories directly 00:05:41.839 --> 00:05:44.319 inspired his novels of lower middle class English 00:05:44.319 --> 00:05:47.180 life. Like Kipps and The History of Mr. Polly. 00:05:47.339 --> 00:05:49.860 Exactly. Kipps came out in 1905, Mr. Polly in 00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:52.660 1910. These books are incredibly sharp, humane 00:05:52.660 --> 00:05:54.259 critiques of the class system that had nearly 00:05:54.259 --> 00:05:56.389 trapped him. But he found a second escape route, 00:05:56.470 --> 00:05:58.329 not just through fiction, but through this aggressive 00:05:58.329 --> 00:06:00.970 self -education. While his mother was working 00:06:00.970 --> 00:06:02.990 as a housekeeper at a manor called Upp Park, 00:06:03.170 --> 00:06:05.569 Wells gained access to its magnificent library. 00:06:05.970 --> 00:06:08.790 This was the real turning point. From apprentice 00:06:08.790 --> 00:06:12.230 to intellectual, he spent hours immersed in classic 00:06:12.230 --> 00:06:14.790 works, reading Plato's Republic and, perhaps 00:06:14.790 --> 00:06:17.670 most formative for his later career, Thomas More's 00:06:17.670 --> 00:06:20.480 Utopia. So he's reading the foundational texts 00:06:20.480 --> 00:06:23.300 on ideal societies. Right. And this foundational 00:06:23.300 --> 00:06:25.779 exposure to political philosophy and the structure 00:06:25.779 --> 00:06:28.779 of ideal societies gave his later science fiction 00:06:28.779 --> 00:06:31.360 its heavy intellectual weight. He wasn't just 00:06:31.360 --> 00:06:33.610 making up monsters. He was. designing societies. 00:06:33.910 --> 00:06:36.350 And this self -driven academic rigor, it paid 00:06:36.350 --> 00:06:39.529 off. In 1884, he won a scholarship to the Normal 00:06:39.529 --> 00:06:41.569 School of Science, which is now the Royal College 00:06:41.569 --> 00:06:44.350 of Science in London. And there he studied biology 00:06:44.350 --> 00:06:46.930 under the great intellectual champion of Darwinism, 00:06:47.069 --> 00:06:49.930 Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley was famously known 00:06:49.930 --> 00:06:52.730 as Darwin's bulldog. And this mentorship was 00:06:52.730 --> 00:06:55.490 absolutely crucial. It deeply influenced Wells' 00:06:55.610 --> 00:06:58.189 later ethical and social thinking, embedding 00:06:58.189 --> 00:07:00.850 his entire worldview firmly within a Darwinian 00:07:00.850 --> 00:07:03.170 evolutionary context. So he wasn't just writing 00:07:03.170 --> 00:07:05.670 about the future. No, he was writing about the 00:07:05.670 --> 00:07:07.970 evolutionary endpoints of humanity and civilization. 00:07:08.529 --> 00:07:11.329 This is the intellectual engine behind the Eloi 00:07:11.329 --> 00:07:13.930 and the Morlocks in the time machine. That idea 00:07:13.930 --> 00:07:17.129 that society splits into separate, specialized, 00:07:17.670 --> 00:07:21.129 almost non -human species based entirely on economic 00:07:21.129 --> 00:07:23.990 class. Exactly. It's a chilling warning about 00:07:23.990 --> 00:07:27.509 Victorian class structure disguised as an adventure 00:07:27.509 --> 00:07:30.490 story. So his fantastical worlds are essentially 00:07:30.490 --> 00:07:33.250 biological extrapolations of Victorian class 00:07:33.250 --> 00:07:36.149 struggle. That's a powerful connection. Yet despite 00:07:36.149 --> 00:07:38.470 this intellectual ascent, he was still physically 00:07:38.470 --> 00:07:41.230 suffering. He received a comfortable allowance 00:07:41.230 --> 00:07:44.370 of a guinea a week, 21 shillings, which should 00:07:44.370 --> 00:07:46.470 have placed him far above poverty. It really 00:07:46.470 --> 00:07:48.750 should have. Many working class families at the 00:07:48.750 --> 00:07:50.649 time were living on about a pound a week for 00:07:50.649 --> 00:07:53.389 all their expenses. But Wells recorded in his 00:07:53.389 --> 00:07:56.069 own diaries that he was constantly hungry and 00:07:56.069 --> 00:07:58.490 was visibly malnourished. So what was happening 00:07:58.490 --> 00:08:00.970 there? It's profound sociological contradiction. 00:08:01.389 --> 00:08:03.730 He had the opportunity and the funds for social 00:08:03.730 --> 00:08:06.430 mobility, but he was still psychologically and 00:08:06.430 --> 00:08:08.310 physically suffering from the deprivation of 00:08:08.310 --> 00:08:10.939 his childhood. He just couldn't shake that ingrained 00:08:10.939 --> 00:08:13.339 poverty mindset, or maybe he just couldn't manage 00:08:13.339 --> 00:08:15.600 his money effectively. But his academic output 00:08:15.600 --> 00:08:18.639 was stellar? Oh, absolutely. Despite the hunger, 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:21.319 he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology 00:08:21.319 --> 00:08:24.319 in 1890, and his very first substantial published 00:08:24.319 --> 00:08:28.019 work wasn't a novel at all, but a serious, two 00:08:28.019 --> 00:08:31.910 -volume textbook of biology in 1893. He was a 00:08:31.910 --> 00:08:34.509 certified, disciplined scientist before he became 00:08:34.509 --> 00:08:37.210 a literary star. And he started mixing that serious 00:08:37.210 --> 00:08:39.429 study with early literary experiments almost 00:08:39.429 --> 00:08:42.240 immediately. He was contributing humorous articles 00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:45.279 to journals like the Pall Mall Gazette, mostly 00:08:45.279 --> 00:08:47.960 as a necessary source of income after he left 00:08:47.960 --> 00:08:50.019 the science school. He was also actively engaging 00:08:50.019 --> 00:08:52.320 with the scientific community. He was among the 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:54.139 founders of something called the Science School 00:08:54.139 --> 00:08:57.720 Journal. And it was there in 1888 that he published 00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:00.320 a story called The Chronic Argonauts. And that's 00:09:00.320 --> 00:09:02.679 the precursor. That is the clear, rough draft 00:09:02.679 --> 00:09:05.690 precursor to the time machine. The foundations 00:09:05.690 --> 00:09:07.909 for his defining work were being laid while he 00:09:07.909 --> 00:09:10.149 was still navigating the science world. And the 00:09:10.149 --> 00:09:12.809 industrial world, too. He had a brief stay in 00:09:12.809 --> 00:09:15.049 Stoke -on -Trent, which was known as the Potteries, 00:09:15.070 --> 00:09:18.350 in 1888, and he saw the iron foundry furnaces 00:09:18.350 --> 00:09:21.309 burning constantly over the city. And that imagery, 00:09:21.490 --> 00:09:24.809 that terrifying raw power of the Industrial Revolution, 00:09:25.049 --> 00:09:27.889 is thought to have directly inspired the descriptions 00:09:27.889 --> 00:09:30.840 of the catastrophic Martian machinery. and the 00:09:30.840 --> 00:09:32.759 destruction you see later in the War of the Worlds. 00:09:32.919 --> 00:09:35.279 So his worldview is this fantastic synthesis, 00:09:35.600 --> 00:09:38.620 classical philosophy from the library, the raw 00:09:38.620 --> 00:09:41.360 imagery of industrial England, rigorous biological 00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:43.899 science from Huxley, and the lived experience 00:09:43.899 --> 00:09:47.139 of poverty. That chaotic, rich mix is what gave 00:09:47.139 --> 00:09:50.000 him the unique perspective to redefine literature. 00:09:50.570 --> 00:09:52.789 That blend of the discipline in the raw industrial 00:09:52.789 --> 00:09:55.769 is the perfect segue. We move now from the unhappy 00:09:55.769 --> 00:09:57.950 apprentice and the hungry student to the genre 00:09:57.950 --> 00:10:00.809 -defining titan. He enters this hyper -prolific 00:10:00.809 --> 00:10:03.830 phase with an incredible six -year output between 00:10:03.830 --> 00:10:07.690 1895 and 1901 that, I mean, it cemented his reputation 00:10:07.690 --> 00:10:10.389 forever. This period is just defined by the practical 00:10:10.389 --> 00:10:13.759 application of Wells' law. He moved beyond speculative 00:10:13.759 --> 00:10:15.960 stories and created the modern paradigm of what 00:10:15.960 --> 00:10:18.480 he called scientific romance. He understood that 00:10:18.480 --> 00:10:20.559 readers of his era were scientifically literate 00:10:20.559 --> 00:10:22.220 enough to follow complex thought experiments 00:10:22.220 --> 00:10:24.600 as long as the emotional terrain was familiar. 00:10:24.860 --> 00:10:26.879 So the goal was to force the reader to think 00:10:26.879 --> 00:10:29.259 about the implications of the fantastic, not 00:10:29.259 --> 00:10:31.600 just the adventure itself. Exactly. Let's break 00:10:31.600 --> 00:10:34.000 down those pivotal scientific romances because 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:36.480 each one is a foundational text, starting with 00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:38.980 a novel that literally created a new term for 00:10:38.980 --> 00:10:41.840 the English language. The Time Machine. The Time 00:10:41.840 --> 00:10:45.340 Machine, published in 1895, was his first true 00:10:45.340 --> 00:10:50.000 success. And the key, as per Wells' law, was 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:53.080 that single extraordinary assumption, a vehicle 00:10:53.080 --> 00:10:55.740 that allows an operator to travel purposefully 00:10:55.740 --> 00:10:58.639 and selectively through time. And he coined the 00:10:58.639 --> 00:11:00.960 term. He coined the term Time Machine, and the 00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:03.600 concept became instantly ubiquitous. And the 00:11:03.600 --> 00:11:06.220 realism is in the setting. He contrasts this 00:11:06.220 --> 00:11:08.580 impossible vehicle, the very first example in 00:11:08.580 --> 00:11:11.799 fiction, with the very solid upper -class comforts 00:11:11.799 --> 00:11:13.480 at the time traveler's parlor and his dinner 00:11:13.480 --> 00:11:16.320 party guests. But the real depth, as you said, 00:11:16.379 --> 00:11:19.240 comes from his Darwinian training. Exactly. The 00:11:19.240 --> 00:11:21.860 journey forward is this horrific projection of 00:11:21.860 --> 00:11:24.679 social stratification. The human species has 00:11:24.679 --> 00:11:27.179 split into the effete, surface -dwelling alloy. 00:11:27.440 --> 00:11:29.759 Representing the final, useless extreme of the 00:11:29.759 --> 00:11:32.159 leisured class. Right. And the subterranean, 00:11:32.320 --> 00:11:35.309 cannibalistic Morlocks. who represent the brutalized 00:11:35.309 --> 00:11:37.549 industrial working class. They are no longer 00:11:37.549 --> 00:11:40.289 humans. They are distinct, separate evolutionary 00:11:40.289 --> 00:11:43.309 products of Victorian society. It's a chilling 00:11:43.309 --> 00:11:46.629 warning. Then came the quintessential alien invasion 00:11:46.629 --> 00:11:50.269 story, The War of the Worlds in 1898. The sheer 00:11:50.269 --> 00:11:53.710 cultural impact of this novel is just immeasurable. 00:11:53.950 --> 00:11:55.870 It is the template for everything that followed. 00:11:56.600 --> 00:11:59.220 Wells planned and wrote it while living in Woking, 00:11:59.259 --> 00:12:02.659 Surrey between 1895 and 1896. And again, the 00:12:02.659 --> 00:12:05.399 adherence to realism is key. He set the Martian 00:12:05.399 --> 00:12:07.279 landings right there on Horstall Common. In his 00:12:07.279 --> 00:12:10.080 own neighborhood. Right in his backyard. Using 00:12:10.080 --> 00:12:12.559 these incredibly familiar, highly detailed English 00:12:12.559 --> 00:12:15.779 landscapes as the backdrop for impossible devastation. 00:12:16.090 --> 00:12:17.990 And beyond the terror, the story contains this 00:12:17.990 --> 00:12:20.289 devastating social critique, doesn't it? The 00:12:20.289 --> 00:12:22.490 Martians treat humans exactly the way Victorian, 00:12:22.750 --> 00:12:25.029 Arab, British, and European colonizers treated 00:12:25.029 --> 00:12:27.590 indigenous peoples across the globe. Precisely. 00:12:27.710 --> 00:12:30.669 With utter indifference and superior firepower, 00:12:31.049 --> 00:12:33.889 Wells turns the lens of imperialism back on the 00:12:33.889 --> 00:12:36.470 British reader. The Martlins, in their merciless 00:12:36.470 --> 00:12:38.769 use of the heat ray, are a dark reflection of 00:12:38.769 --> 00:12:41.330 British military might and the casual cruelty 00:12:41.330 --> 00:12:43.830 of colonial expansion suddenly brought home. 00:12:44.120 --> 00:12:47.340 It's an exercise in empathy by catastrophe. That's 00:12:47.340 --> 00:12:49.259 a great way to put it. Wells didn't just deal 00:12:49.259 --> 00:12:52.480 with external threats. In 1896, he gave us the 00:12:52.480 --> 00:12:54.940 island of Dr. Moreau, which is maybe his darkest 00:12:54.940 --> 00:12:57.720 and most philosophical exploration of identity 00:12:57.720 --> 00:13:00.879 and morality. Moreau is a visceral journey into 00:13:00.879 --> 00:13:04.120 interference with nature. It explores these profound 00:13:04.120 --> 00:13:07.679 ethical questions about pain, cruelty, and the 00:13:07.679 --> 00:13:10.720 limits of human identity. Dr. Moreau is a scientist 00:13:10.720 --> 00:13:13.460 creating human -like hybrid beast folk through 00:13:13.460 --> 00:13:16.360 vivisection. A concept we now call uplift in 00:13:16.360 --> 00:13:18.059 science fiction. That's right. And the narrative 00:13:18.059 --> 00:13:20.139 tension comes from the beast folk desperately 00:13:20.139 --> 00:13:22.580 trying to follow the law imposed upon them by 00:13:22.580 --> 00:13:24.899 Moreau, which reflects the veneer of civilization 00:13:24.899 --> 00:13:27.620 being imposed upon humanity itself. And the haunting 00:13:27.620 --> 00:13:30.980 conclusion makes this explicit. It does. The 00:13:30.980 --> 00:13:33.500 narrator escapes the horror of the island and 00:13:33.500 --> 00:13:36.299 returns to England, but finds himself irreparably 00:13:36.299 --> 00:13:39.080 damaged by the experience. He can no longer shake 00:13:39.080 --> 00:13:41.179 the perception that his fellow humans are simply 00:13:41.179 --> 00:13:44.139 barely civilized beasts prone to reverting to 00:13:44.139 --> 00:13:46.080 their animal natures at any moment. So it's a 00:13:46.080 --> 00:13:48.559 direct critique of the late Victorian faith and 00:13:48.559 --> 00:13:50.860 social progress, suggesting that civilization 00:13:50.860 --> 00:13:53.779 is just skin deep. Exactly. And cementing his 00:13:53.779 --> 00:13:56.340 run of iconic figures, The Invisible Man, published 00:13:56.340 --> 00:14:00.169 in 1897, introduces us to Dr. Griffin. He's the 00:14:00.169 --> 00:14:02.529 brilliant but nihilistic research scientist who 00:14:02.529 --> 00:14:05.169 successfully achieves invisibility, but then 00:14:05.169 --> 00:14:07.990 discovers he cannot reverse the process. And 00:14:07.990 --> 00:14:10.429 Griffin quickly descends into enthusiasm for 00:14:10.429 --> 00:14:12.909 random, anonymous, and irresponsible violence. 00:14:13.149 --> 00:14:16.029 He realizes the total moral and legal freedom 00:14:16.029 --> 00:14:18.690 invisibility grants him. He embodies the danger 00:14:18.690 --> 00:14:21.269 of science divorced from ethics. A cautionary 00:14:21.269 --> 00:14:23.529 tale about technological power without moral 00:14:23.529 --> 00:14:25.909 responsibility, and an iconic figure in horror 00:14:25.909 --> 00:14:28.769 fiction. His run continued strong into the 20th 00:14:28.769 --> 00:14:31.429 century with the first men in the moon in 1901. 00:14:31.830 --> 00:14:34.990 Beyond the idea of cavorite, the fictional material 00:14:34.990 --> 00:14:38.029 that negates gravity, allowing travel wells explores 00:14:38.029 --> 00:14:40.909 astronomical communication. Yes, he featured 00:14:40.909 --> 00:14:43.450 the idea of radio communication between astronomical 00:14:43.450 --> 00:14:46.190 objects. And this was actually inspired by Nikola 00:14:46.190 --> 00:14:48.889 Tesla's contemporaneous claims that he had received 00:14:48.889 --> 00:14:52.230 mysterious radio signals from Mars. Wow. So he's 00:14:52.230 --> 00:14:54.970 synthesizing cutting edge science in real time. 00:14:55.029 --> 00:14:58.470 Always. and turning it into narrative. It's fitting 00:14:58.470 --> 00:15:01.309 that the H .G. Wells crater on the far side of 00:15:01.309 --> 00:15:04.149 the moon was named after him in 1970, confirming 00:15:04.149 --> 00:15:06.549 his permanent place in space exploration history. 00:15:06.970 --> 00:15:09.389 It is staggering that he achieved this dazzling 00:15:09.389 --> 00:15:12.149 display of new thought in just six years, while 00:15:12.149 --> 00:15:14.490 simultaneously finding commercial success in 00:15:14.490 --> 00:15:16.769 genres far removed from science fiction, like 00:15:16.769 --> 00:15:18.690 the realist novels we mentioned, Kipps and Mr. 00:15:18.850 --> 00:15:22.269 Polley. Indeed, these realist novels were immensely 00:15:22.269 --> 00:15:24.710 popular and well regarded for their accurate 00:15:24.710 --> 00:15:27.169 and sympathetic depiction of the struggles of 00:15:27.169 --> 00:15:29.690 the lower middle class. And at the same time, 00:15:29.750 --> 00:15:32.629 he wrote mythological works like The Wonderful 00:15:32.629 --> 00:15:35.500 Visit, which dealt with an angel. and the sea 00:15:35.500 --> 00:15:38.159 lady featuring a mermaid. He was never content 00:15:38.159 --> 00:15:40.720 to stay in one lane. But the reputation that 00:15:40.720 --> 00:15:43.679 truly vaulted him into global influence, and 00:15:43.679 --> 00:15:46.659 which we need to dive into now, is his role as 00:15:46.659 --> 00:15:49.750 the futurist and prophet. He didn't just invent 00:15:49.750 --> 00:15:52.610 concepts. He seemed to possess a crystal ball 00:15:52.610 --> 00:15:55.330 for the political and technological catastrophes 00:15:55.330 --> 00:15:57.970 of the 20th century. Without question, his most 00:15:57.970 --> 00:16:01.009 dramatic and consequential prophetic hit is found 00:16:01.009 --> 00:16:03.370 in the novel The World Set Free, published in 00:16:03.370 --> 00:16:06.230 1914, right on the cusp of the First World War. 00:16:06.450 --> 00:16:08.070 What's fascinating is that the book is dedicated 00:16:08.070 --> 00:16:10.429 to Frederick Soddy, the chemist who proved the 00:16:10.429 --> 00:16:13.169 existence of radioactive isotopes. So Wells was 00:16:13.169 --> 00:16:14.970 reading the most complex theoretical science 00:16:14.970 --> 00:16:17.289 of the day and immediately recognizing its potential 00:16:17.289 --> 00:16:20.379 consequences. He was synthesizing knowledge that 00:16:20.379 --> 00:16:23.399 others hadn't yet connected. And in this book, 00:16:23.480 --> 00:16:26.919 he writes the first description of a weapon utilizing 00:16:26.919 --> 00:16:30.379 accelerated radioactive decay. He termed it the 00:16:30.379 --> 00:16:33.100 atomic bomb. And the mechanism he imagined was 00:16:33.100 --> 00:16:36.340 chillingly specific. It was. Unlike the real 00:16:36.340 --> 00:16:39.740 -world fission bomb, Wells' fictional bomb accelerated 00:16:39.740 --> 00:16:42.940 the natural radioactive decay of elements, resulting 00:16:42.940 --> 00:16:45.200 in explosions that were incredibly persistent, 00:16:45.539 --> 00:16:48.899 managing to continue to explode for days. He 00:16:48.899 --> 00:16:51.419 wrote a passage, didn't he? A remarkable one, 00:16:51.440 --> 00:16:53.720 he wrote. Nothing could have been more obvious 00:16:53.720 --> 00:16:56.279 to the people of the earlier 20th century than 00:16:56.279 --> 00:16:58.460 the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. 00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:01.159 but they did not see it until the atomic bombs 00:17:01.159 --> 00:17:04.160 burst in their fumbling hands. He saw the technological 00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:06.980 capacity for self -destruction so clearly. This 00:17:06.980 --> 00:17:09.480 wasn't just spooky foresight. This particular 00:17:09.480 --> 00:17:11.940 piece of fiction had a direct and documented 00:17:11.940 --> 00:17:14.700 real -world impact on the single most transformative 00:17:14.700 --> 00:17:17.339 scientific project of the mid -20th century. 00:17:17.559 --> 00:17:20.720 Absolutely crucial. In 1932, the Hungarian -American 00:17:20.720 --> 00:17:23.559 physicist Leo Szilard, who would later become 00:17:23.559 --> 00:17:25.460 one of the central figures in the Manhattan Project, 00:17:25.779 --> 00:17:28.680 read The World Set Free. And Szilard was already 00:17:28.680 --> 00:17:31.420 working on nuclear physics. He was. And in 1933, 00:17:31.720 --> 00:17:34.759 he conceived the idea of a self -sustaining nuclear 00:17:34.759 --> 00:17:38.140 chain reaction. And knowing the devastating military 00:17:38.140 --> 00:17:40.599 potential, he assigned his patent for the chain 00:17:40.599 --> 00:17:42.900 reaction to the British Admiralty to keep it 00:17:42.900 --> 00:17:45.759 secret from the wider scientific community. Specifically 00:17:45.759 --> 00:17:48.690 because of the book. Specifically. He stated 00:17:48.690 --> 00:17:51.809 in his memoirs, knowing what a chain reaction 00:17:51.809 --> 00:17:53.910 would mean, and I knew it because I had read 00:17:53.910 --> 00:17:56.690 H .G. Wells, I did not want this patent to become 00:17:56.690 --> 00:17:59.750 public. Wells' fiction provided the conceptual 00:17:59.750 --> 00:18:02.230 vocabulary and the ethical imperative for the 00:18:02.230 --> 00:18:05.210 men who built the actual bomb. That is just staggering 00:18:05.210 --> 00:18:07.609 how quickly his fiction became blueprint. It's 00:18:07.609 --> 00:18:09.849 unbelievable. Let's look now at his nonfiction 00:18:09.849 --> 00:18:13.890 predictions. His 1901 work, Anticipations, detailed 00:18:13.890 --> 00:18:16.789 the world he expected by the year 2000. It was 00:18:16.789 --> 00:18:19.549 subtitled An Experiment in Prophecy. And the 00:18:19.549 --> 00:18:22.130 hits are astonishing. He foresaw the advent of 00:18:22.130 --> 00:18:24.710 aircraft, tanks, and crucially space travel, 00:18:24.849 --> 00:18:27.029 and the development of something resembling satellite 00:18:27.029 --> 00:18:29.769 television. But his most accurate sociological 00:18:29.769 --> 00:18:32.009 prediction was based on transport. Tell me more 00:18:32.009 --> 00:18:34.329 about that. He correctly predicted the revolutionary 00:18:34.329 --> 00:18:37.900 effect of motorized transport. Wells argued that 00:18:37.900 --> 00:18:40.180 the tyranny of the train line would end, enabling 00:18:40.180 --> 00:18:42.140 people to live further away from their central 00:18:42.140 --> 00:18:44.420 workplaces, which would lead to the rapid growth 00:18:44.420 --> 00:18:46.880 of suburbs and commuter belts outside the crowded 00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:50.500 cities. So he basically predicted suburban sprawl. 00:18:50.579 --> 00:18:53.599 He did. He also predicted the defeat of German 00:18:53.599 --> 00:18:56.259 militarism and even the existence of something 00:18:56.259 --> 00:18:58.980 resembling a functional European Union. Yet the 00:18:58.980 --> 00:19:01.799 profit wasn't infallible. The sources note some 00:19:01.799 --> 00:19:05.700 famous, almost comical misses. Indeed. He was 00:19:05.700 --> 00:19:08.160 right about aircraft existing, but thought they 00:19:08.160 --> 00:19:10.500 wouldn't become truly successful or militarily 00:19:10.500 --> 00:19:14.220 decisive until after 1950. And he famously asserted 00:19:14.220 --> 00:19:16.619 that submarines would only suffocate its crew 00:19:16.619 --> 00:19:18.900 and founder at sea. So it shows he was always 00:19:18.900 --> 00:19:20.940 extrapolating based on the technology of his 00:19:20.940 --> 00:19:23.839 day. Exactly. He wasn't divining future breakthroughs 00:19:23.839 --> 00:19:26.220 out of thin air. His failures are as informative 00:19:26.220 --> 00:19:28.779 as his successes. Where his extrapolations about 00:19:28.779 --> 00:19:31.019 conflict were concerned, though, he was tragically 00:19:31.019 --> 00:19:34.140 accurate. His 1933 work, The Shape of Things 00:19:34.140 --> 00:19:36.539 to Come, predicted a global conflict beginning 00:19:36.539 --> 00:19:39.599 in January 1940. Only four months off from the 00:19:39.599 --> 00:19:42.359 actual outbreak of World War II in September 00:19:42.359 --> 00:19:46.480 1939. And the novel accurately depicted cities 00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:48.960 being systematically destroyed by aerial bombs, 00:19:49.140 --> 00:19:51.359 which was a horrifying novelty at the time of 00:19:51.359 --> 00:19:53.900 writing. He also recognized the rise of dangerous 00:19:53.900 --> 00:19:56.619 political pathologies across Europe, portraying 00:19:56.619 --> 00:19:59.119 fascist dictators with shocking clarity in novels 00:19:59.119 --> 00:20:01.700 like The Autocracy of Mr. Parham and The Holy 00:20:01.700 --> 00:20:04.359 Terror. Wells recognized that the political vacuum 00:20:04.359 --> 00:20:07.099 created by the First World War allowed for the 00:20:07.099 --> 00:20:09.539 rise of these charismatic, irrational, and highly 00:20:09.539 --> 00:20:12.740 destructive strongmen. He analyzed that pathology 00:20:12.740 --> 00:20:15.789 very effectively. Before these real cataclysmic 00:20:15.789 --> 00:20:18.369 wars, however, Wells offered a safer miniature 00:20:18.369 --> 00:20:21.789 alternative for aggressive impulses. He essentially 00:20:21.789 --> 00:20:24.950 invented modern miniature wargaming. He did. 00:20:25.089 --> 00:20:28.150 In Floor Games and Little Wars, he laid out complex 00:20:28.150 --> 00:20:30.710 rules for moving infantry, cavalry, and artillery 00:20:30.710 --> 00:20:32.970 across the living room carpet. The man who predicted 00:20:32.970 --> 00:20:35.089 the atomic bomb was also essentially the great 00:20:35.089 --> 00:20:37.170 -grandfather of every kid playing Warhammer in 00:20:37.170 --> 00:20:38.650 a basement. That's a marvelous contradiction. 00:20:38.849 --> 00:20:41.930 As a pacifist before World War I, he stated that 00:20:41.930 --> 00:20:45.019 this game was... much better than the real thing, 00:20:45.160 --> 00:20:48.099 calling it an amiable miniature alternative to 00:20:48.099 --> 00:20:51.200 actual conflict. That deep compassion and desire 00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:54.039 for a better system brings us to his role, not 00:20:54.039 --> 00:20:56.940 just as a prophet of technology, but as a persistent 00:20:56.940 --> 00:20:59.900 and relentless social critic and global thinker, 00:20:59.960 --> 00:21:02.980 a role he actively prioritized in his later career. 00:21:03.240 --> 00:21:05.839 His political stance was rooted deeply in the 00:21:05.839 --> 00:21:08.079 British socialist movement. He was an outspoken 00:21:08.079 --> 00:21:10.259 socialist from a young age and a prominent member 00:21:10.259 --> 00:21:12.319 of the Fabian Society. And for our listener, 00:21:12.440 --> 00:21:14.799 we should clarify that the Fabian Society wasn't 00:21:14.799 --> 00:21:17.000 about sudden revolution. They were committed 00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:20.059 to achieving socialism. gradually through intellectual 00:21:20.059 --> 00:21:23.240 debate and parliamentary reform. Exactly. Rational 00:21:23.240 --> 00:21:25.980 evolution, not sudden catastrophe. And Wells 00:21:25.980 --> 00:21:28.039 was so committed to shaping the political future 00:21:28.039 --> 00:21:29.960 that he even stood as a later party candidate 00:21:29.960 --> 00:21:33.559 for London University in both the 1922 and 1923 00:21:33.559 --> 00:21:36.180 general elections. He was a participant, not 00:21:36.180 --> 00:21:38.900 just an observer. This political activism led 00:21:38.900 --> 00:21:41.539 to fascinating and often strained relationships 00:21:41.539 --> 00:21:44.220 with figures of the establishment, none more 00:21:44.220 --> 00:21:46.200 intriguing than Winston Churchill, who was an 00:21:46.200 --> 00:21:48.599 avid reader of Wells' books. Their relationship 00:21:48.599 --> 00:21:51.839 went far beyond just social dining. Churchill 00:21:51.839 --> 00:21:55.160 was profoundly influenced by Wells' ideas. Not 00:21:55.160 --> 00:21:57.660 only did Churchill borrow specific dramatic lines, 00:21:57.839 --> 00:22:00.279 famously using the phrase the gathering storm, 00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:02.460 which Wells had used in the War of the Worlds, 00:22:02.579 --> 00:22:05.680 to describe the rise of Nazi Germany. But the 00:22:05.680 --> 00:22:07.839 influence ran deeper than that. Much deeper. 00:22:08.099 --> 00:22:11.160 Policy influence. Wells' socialist ideas about 00:22:11.160 --> 00:22:12.720 the support of state and national efficiency 00:22:12.720 --> 00:22:16.720 directly influenced a famous 1906 speech by Churchill. 00:22:17.180 --> 00:22:19.380 Churchill was adapting Wells' vision of government 00:22:19.380 --> 00:22:21.819 intervention to help the working poor. And Churchill 00:22:21.819 --> 00:22:23.980 acknowledged this. He did. He later wrote to 00:22:23.980 --> 00:22:27.180 Wells, I owe you a great debt. Wells' imagination 00:22:27.180 --> 00:22:29.720 provided intellectual ammunition for his most 00:22:29.720 --> 00:22:31.960 powerful political opponents. It's fascinating. 00:22:32.430 --> 00:22:34.450 Wells was ultimately driven by this powerful 00:22:34.450 --> 00:22:37.509 utopian impulse, an overarching desire to outline 00:22:37.509 --> 00:22:40.589 a rational, efficient, and just society. He devoted 00:22:40.589 --> 00:22:42.990 several major works to this pursuit, starting 00:22:42.990 --> 00:22:46.450 with A Modern Utopia in 1905. A Modern Utopia 00:22:46.450 --> 00:22:49.609 envisioned a worldwide society with a standardized 00:22:49.609 --> 00:22:52.470 system of knowledge and governance. And delightfully, 00:22:52.630 --> 00:22:55.650 it had no imports but meteorites and no exports 00:22:55.650 --> 00:22:58.130 at all, completely self -sufficient. And his 00:22:58.130 --> 00:23:00.829 utopian solutions often involved some massive 00:23:00.829 --> 00:23:03.609 global shift, like the mysterious gases. Yes, 00:23:03.630 --> 00:23:05.950 exactly. In the days of the comet, mysterious 00:23:05.950 --> 00:23:08.170 gases from the comet suddenly caused people to 00:23:08.170 --> 00:23:10.769 behave rationally, abandoning a massive European 00:23:10.769 --> 00:23:13.869 war. Or, in the showbiz things to come, a World 00:23:13.869 --> 00:23:16.369 Council of Scientists takes over after a devastating 00:23:16.369 --> 00:23:19.170 global war and guides humanity toward a peaceful, 00:23:19.309 --> 00:23:21.809 technocratic future. So the recurring message 00:23:21.809 --> 00:23:25.269 is that profound, often non -democratic societal 00:23:25.269 --> 00:23:28.829 restructuring is necessary to escape humanity's 00:23:28.829 --> 00:23:31.210 self -destructive tendencies. That's it. And 00:23:31.210 --> 00:23:33.109 to educate the masses for this rational future, 00:23:33.430 --> 00:23:35.670 Wells embarked on a massive historical project. 00:23:35.970 --> 00:23:38.849 The Outline of History, published in 1920, was 00:23:38.849 --> 00:23:41.130 a huge commercial success. It was revolutionary 00:23:41.130 --> 00:23:44.119 because it democratized history, wasn't it? Absolutely. 00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:46.380 It wasn't written for academics. It was a popularized 00:23:46.380 --> 00:23:48.619 work of world history written from a secular 00:23:48.619 --> 00:23:51.740 global perspective. It made him a rich man and 00:23:51.740 --> 00:23:53.660 spurred many other authors to create their own 00:23:53.660 --> 00:23:56.319 popular outlines of different subjects. He followed 00:23:56.319 --> 00:23:58.240 that success quickly with A Short History of 00:23:58.240 --> 00:24:00.839 the World in 1922, which was praised by Albert 00:24:00.839 --> 00:24:03.759 Einstein. He truly saw himself as a global teacher. 00:24:03.980 --> 00:24:06.700 And this commitment to universal knowledge culminated 00:24:06.700 --> 00:24:08.680 in his most visionary and perhaps most relevant 00:24:08.680 --> 00:24:12.539 concept to us today, the world brain. This feels 00:24:12.539 --> 00:24:14.619 profoundly like a prediction of the Internet. 00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:18.319 What exactly did he envision? In 1936, Wells 00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:20.740 called for the compilation of a constantly growing 00:24:20.740 --> 00:24:23.799 and changing world encyclopedia. This wasn't 00:24:23.799 --> 00:24:26.319 just a big book. It had to be continually reviewed 00:24:26.319 --> 00:24:29.019 by outstanding authorities, instantly accessible 00:24:29.019 --> 00:24:32.059 to every human being globally. He expanded this 00:24:32.059 --> 00:24:35.119 vision in his 1938 book, World Brain. The ultimate 00:24:35.119 --> 00:24:37.740 repository of integrated, verifiable knowledge? 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:40.460 A system designed to overcome ignorance and misinformation. 00:24:41.119 --> 00:24:43.579 Yet, despite this boundless optimism and his 00:24:43.579 --> 00:24:46.299 dedication to global organization, he collaborated 00:24:46.299 --> 00:24:48.299 on booklets supporting the League of Nations. 00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:51.140 The political realities of the interwar period 00:24:51.140 --> 00:24:53.960 seem to have deeply disillusioned him. They did. 00:24:54.160 --> 00:24:56.460 The League of Nations proved too weak to prevent 00:24:56.460 --> 00:24:59.019 the rise of fascism, disappointing him greatly. 00:24:59.200 --> 00:25:02.420 He dubbed the entire interwar period the age 00:25:02.420 --> 00:25:05.740 of frustration. His optimism finally shattered 00:25:05.740 --> 00:25:07.740 toward the end of his life. And the ultimate 00:25:07.740 --> 00:25:10.640 expression of that final dark turn came in his 00:25:10.640 --> 00:25:13.240 last book. Mind at the End of Its Tether from 00:25:13.240 --> 00:25:17.099 1945. It expressed a shocking deep pessimism. 00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:19.519 Well suggested that humanity's story might simply 00:25:19.519 --> 00:25:22.059 be over and that humanity being replaced by another 00:25:22.059 --> 00:25:24.619 more rational species might not be a bad idea. 00:25:24.839 --> 00:25:27.259 A bleak conclusion from the man who had spent 00:25:27.259 --> 00:25:30.359 a lifetime pushing for human progress. Very bleak. 00:25:30.670 --> 00:25:33.170 But before that final dark turn, his commitment 00:25:33.170 --> 00:25:35.970 to a rational, ethical world state left an immense 00:25:35.970 --> 00:25:38.470 political and legal legacy that persists today. 00:25:38.710 --> 00:25:40.890 This is perhaps his most overlooked contribution. 00:25:41.329 --> 00:25:44.410 His extensive writings on equality and human 00:25:44.410 --> 00:25:46.930 rights, particularly his influential work The 00:25:46.930 --> 00:25:49.950 Rights of Man from 1940, directly impacted foundational 00:25:49.950 --> 00:25:52.990 international law. How did The Rights of Man 00:25:52.990 --> 00:25:55.650 specifically influence the United Nations Charter? 00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:58.440 Well, Wells didn't just write abstract philosophy. 00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:01.440 He wrote a list of practical, actionable rights 00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:03.819 he believed were essential for a functioning 00:26:03.819 --> 00:26:06.660 global citizen. The right to nourishment, to 00:26:06.660 --> 00:26:09.539 education, to legal aid, to protection from violence. 00:26:09.779 --> 00:26:12.720 His texts circulated widely among policymakers 00:26:12.720 --> 00:26:14.920 and intellectuals during the planning stages 00:26:14.920 --> 00:26:17.740 of the post -war world order. So it was a direct 00:26:17.740 --> 00:26:20.640 blueprint. It was. When the UN drafted the Universal 00:26:20.640 --> 00:26:23.960 Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, Wells' detailed 00:26:23.960 --> 00:26:26.819 framework emphasized... economic and social rights 00:26:26.819 --> 00:26:29.880 alongside civil liberties laid essential groundwork. 00:26:30.019 --> 00:26:32.640 So from a working class apprentice reading Plato's 00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:34.859 Republic to helping define foundational international 00:26:34.859 --> 00:26:37.720 human rights law, that is the staggering trajectory 00:26:37.720 --> 00:26:40.059 of his influence. Now we have to explore the 00:26:40.059 --> 00:26:42.079 controversies and complexities of the man himself 00:26:42.079 --> 00:26:44.819 because H .G. Wells, the prophet of morality 00:26:44.819 --> 00:26:48.059 and utopianism, was also a notably turbulent 00:26:48.059 --> 00:26:50.200 and contradictory figure in his personal life. 00:26:50.339 --> 00:26:52.910 He was a complicated and messy man. Wells had 00:26:52.910 --> 00:26:55.710 multiple well -documented love affairs, often 00:26:55.710 --> 00:26:58.109 overlapping, even while married to his second 00:26:58.109 --> 00:27:00.609 wife, Amy Catherine Robbins, whom he nicknamed 00:27:00.609 --> 00:27:03.490 Jane. He was openly progressive about sexual 00:27:03.490 --> 00:27:06.569 freedom, views that were scandalous for the time. 00:27:06.839 --> 00:27:09.539 The sources list an almost constant stream of 00:27:09.539 --> 00:27:11.680 dramatic relationships that resulted in children 00:27:11.680 --> 00:27:14.059 and great emotional upheaval. Constant drama. 00:27:14.259 --> 00:27:16.240 He had a brief affair with the writer Dorothy 00:27:16.240 --> 00:27:18.619 Richardson that led to a pregnancy and miscarriage. 00:27:18.779 --> 00:27:21.900 He later had a daughter, Anna Jane, with the 00:27:21.900 --> 00:27:24.339 writer and suffragette Amber Reeves in 1909, 00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:27.440 which prompted a major social scandal. And most 00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:30.339 famously, in 1914, he had a son, Anthony West, 00:27:30.579 --> 00:27:32.980 with the formidable novelist and feminist Rebecca 00:27:32.980 --> 00:27:35.859 West, who was 26 years his junior. Their relationship 00:27:35.859 --> 00:27:38.420 was long and passionate, but fraught with his 00:27:38.420 --> 00:27:41.559 ongoing infidelities. Even after that, his life 00:27:41.559 --> 00:27:44.480 remained complex. He partnered with the adventurer 00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:48.339 Odette Kuhn for years. And finally, there was 00:27:48.339 --> 00:27:51.069 Maura Budberg. a Russian adventurer. And she 00:27:51.069 --> 00:27:53.529 was an enduring presence, wasn't she? The source 00:27:53.529 --> 00:27:55.809 notes that she cared for him throughout his final 00:27:55.809 --> 00:27:58.450 illness. She did, but she consistently rejected 00:27:58.450 --> 00:28:01.509 his repeated proposals of marriage. She was fiercely 00:28:01.509 --> 00:28:04.450 independent, a trait Wells admired, but which 00:28:04.450 --> 00:28:07.400 tormented him. And to document all this inner 00:28:07.400 --> 00:28:09.779 life, his complex feelings, his political views, 00:28:10.099 --> 00:28:12.859 Wells turned to his art. He created these little 00:28:12.859 --> 00:28:15.200 drawings and sketches he called pixuas. What 00:28:15.200 --> 00:28:17.279 were these like? They were often burlesque commentary, 00:28:17.579 --> 00:28:19.940 sometimes overtly criticizing his marriage to 00:28:19.940 --> 00:28:22.579 Jane or commenting on his political adversaries. 00:28:22.640 --> 00:28:25.400 They give us a direct, sometimes raw window into 00:28:25.400 --> 00:28:27.259 the mind of the man behind the public persona. 00:28:27.799 --> 00:28:30.160 Beyond his personal relationships, his religious 00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:32.500 evolution was also complex and contradictory, 00:28:32.859 --> 00:28:35.519 evolving over his lifetime from radical non -belief 00:28:35.519 --> 00:28:37.160 to something approaching a new form of faith 00:28:37.160 --> 00:28:40.039 before returning to atheism. He certainly started 00:28:40.039 --> 00:28:42.240 by distancing himself from the established church, 00:28:42.420 --> 00:28:45.000 deeply influenced by the scientific rationalism 00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:47.460 of Huxley. But during his middle years, he went 00:28:47.460 --> 00:28:50.190 through a major spiritual shift. He defended 00:28:50.190 --> 00:28:53.430 the concept of a finite God. A finite God? What 00:28:53.430 --> 00:28:55.549 did he mean by that? Well, in his book, God, 00:28:55.630 --> 00:28:58.890 the Invisible King, he explicitly differentiated 00:28:58.890 --> 00:29:01.829 this God from the traditional creator or omnipotent 00:29:01.829 --> 00:29:05.609 deity. Instead, he saw it as closer to a redeemer, 00:29:05.730 --> 00:29:08.390 the spirit of goodwill and moral purpose that 00:29:08.390 --> 00:29:11.109 resides within humanity, struggling against the 00:29:11.109 --> 00:29:14.309 chaos of the universe. This God was limited in 00:29:14.309 --> 00:29:16.990 power, which made the struggle for progress meaningful. 00:29:17.480 --> 00:29:19.740 A modern, ethical, rationalist spirituality. 00:29:20.220 --> 00:29:23.500 Exactly. Yet late in life, that internal spirituality 00:29:23.500 --> 00:29:26.559 seems to have waned. It did. Late in life, he 00:29:26.559 --> 00:29:28.599 considered himself essentially atheistic. This 00:29:28.599 --> 00:29:30.940 culminated in his most direct attack on organized 00:29:30.940 --> 00:29:34.920 religion. His 1943 book, Crux Ansata, an indictment 00:29:34.920 --> 00:29:37.450 of the Roman Catholic Church. He launched a strong 00:29:37.450 --> 00:29:39.990 polemical attack on Catholicism, specifically 00:29:39.990 --> 00:29:42.829 criticizing Pope Pius XII and controversially 00:29:42.829 --> 00:29:45.230 calling for the bombing of Rome. A very inflammatory 00:29:45.230 --> 00:29:48.250 position at the time. His political fire, however, 00:29:48.390 --> 00:29:50.650 was also aimed at a more immediate and destructive 00:29:50.650 --> 00:29:54.450 enemy in the 1930s, the Nazis. Wells actively 00:29:54.450 --> 00:29:57.250 and publicly criticized German politics and its 00:29:57.250 --> 00:30:00.619 descent into fascism. His outspokenness led directly 00:30:00.619 --> 00:30:03.819 to his books being banned and symbolically burned 00:30:03.819 --> 00:30:07.140 by Nazi youth in Berlin in 1933. And what action 00:30:07.140 --> 00:30:09.940 did he take in response? As president of PN International, 00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:13.460 that's poets, essayists, novelists, between 1933 00:30:13.460 --> 00:30:16.940 and 1936, he oversaw the expulsion of the German 00:30:16.940 --> 00:30:19.779 PN Club from the international body because they 00:30:19.779 --> 00:30:22.380 had refused to admit non -Aryan writers. It was 00:30:22.380 --> 00:30:25.559 a landmark anti -fascist act. And his anti -fascist 00:30:25.559 --> 00:30:27.859 stance earned him a place of high danger in the 00:30:27.859 --> 00:30:30.140 eyes of the Nazi regime. He was listed prominently 00:30:30.140 --> 00:30:32.700 in the SS's Black Book. which was a roster of 00:30:32.700 --> 00:30:34.980 intellectuals and public figures targeted for 00:30:34.980 --> 00:30:36.839 immediate arrest and execution during Operation 00:30:36.839 --> 00:30:38.859 Sea Lion, the planned German invasion of Britain. 00:30:39.019 --> 00:30:41.259 He was correctly viewed as a massive ideological 00:30:41.259 --> 00:30:43.920 threat. Finally, we have to mention a legal controversy 00:30:43.920 --> 00:30:46.059 that speaks volumes about the challenges faced 00:30:46.059 --> 00:30:48.460 by writers, especially women in that era, the 00:30:48.460 --> 00:30:52.140 plagiarism suit of Deeks' Wales. This was a protracted 00:30:52.140 --> 00:30:55.619 and bitter legal battle in the 1920s. A Canadian 00:30:55.619 --> 00:30:58.539 writer, Florence Deeks, sued Wales, claiming 00:30:58.539 --> 00:31:01.559 he had plagiarized his massive 1920s. success, 00:31:01.799 --> 00:31:04.819 the outline of history, from her unpublished 00:31:04.819 --> 00:31:07.519 manuscript. And what was her claim exactly? She 00:31:07.519 --> 00:31:10.119 claimed she'd submitted her manuscript to Macmillan, 00:31:10.160 --> 00:31:12.740 Wells' Canadian publisher, who then provided 00:31:12.740 --> 00:31:16.059 Wells access to her work. The defense centered 00:31:16.059 --> 00:31:18.240 on the argument that the similarities were inevitable, 00:31:18.460 --> 00:31:20.900 as both were drawing on the same common historical 00:31:20.900 --> 00:31:24.200 sources. Wells swore he had never seen her manuscript. 00:31:24.420 --> 00:31:26.299 And the court sided with Wells. That was the 00:31:26.299 --> 00:31:29.190 official verdict, yes. No proof of copying. However, 00:31:29.349 --> 00:31:31.390 the controversy lingers because later historical 00:31:31.390 --> 00:31:34.109 analysis suggested the court's verdict was likely 00:31:34.109 --> 00:31:36.430 influenced by significant bias and prejudice 00:31:36.430 --> 00:31:39.359 against the female plaintiff. She was a relatively 00:31:39.359 --> 00:31:41.519 unknown Canadian woman going up against the world's 00:31:41.519 --> 00:31:43.880 most famous male writer. A complicated footnote 00:31:43.880 --> 00:31:46.400 in his career. Very. Despite the controversies 00:31:46.400 --> 00:31:48.900 and the final pessimism of his later years, H 00:31:48.900 --> 00:31:51.720 .G. Wells remains a monumental figure. He was 00:31:51.720 --> 00:31:53.940 nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four 00:31:53.940 --> 00:31:56.960 times. Even without the Nobel, his influence 00:31:56.960 --> 00:31:59.940 is undeniable. The science fiction historian 00:31:59.940 --> 00:32:03.400 John Clute called Wells the most important writer 00:32:03.400 --> 00:32:06.630 the genre has yet seen. He didn't just write 00:32:06.630 --> 00:32:09.210 within the genre. He fundamentally defined its 00:32:09.210 --> 00:32:12.089 scope. His influence crossed generations and 00:32:12.089 --> 00:32:14.829 continents. He was a touchstone for the heavyweights 00:32:14.829 --> 00:32:17.190 of American science fiction, Asimov, Bradbury, 00:32:17.369 --> 00:32:20.130 Le Guin. And he influenced British writers like 00:32:20.130 --> 00:32:22.829 Arthur C. Clarke and John Wyndham. And we find 00:32:22.829 --> 00:32:25.089 surprising admirers in literary circles, too. 00:32:25.589 --> 00:32:28.069 Vladimir Nabokov called Wells his favorite writer 00:32:28.069 --> 00:32:30.410 when he was a boy and described him as a great 00:32:30.410 --> 00:32:33.269 artist, especially praising his social realism 00:32:33.269 --> 00:32:36.619 novels. provided you ignored his constant sociological 00:32:36.619 --> 00:32:39.059 cogitations. Ah, that brings us back to that 00:32:39.059 --> 00:32:41.380 perennial criticism, that Wells was sometimes 00:32:41.380 --> 00:32:44.259 too focused on the pot of message rather than 00:32:44.259 --> 00:32:46.160 the purity of the narrative. It's the constant 00:32:46.160 --> 00:32:49.079 tension in his work. George Orwell, initially 00:32:49.079 --> 00:32:51.960 an admirer, became a critic, arguing Wells had 00:32:51.960 --> 00:32:54.420 become too sane to understand the modern world. 00:32:54.599 --> 00:32:57.059 And G .K. Chesterton offered the famous stinging 00:32:57.059 --> 00:32:59.980 quip that Wells was a born storyteller who has 00:32:59.980 --> 00:33:02.430 sold his birthright for a pot of message. Whether 00:33:02.430 --> 00:33:05.150 he was chasing narrative purity or world salvation, 00:33:05.490 --> 00:33:07.750 his stories have proved incredibly resilient 00:33:07.750 --> 00:33:10.349 and dramatic, especially through film and television. 00:33:10.650 --> 00:33:14.109 The most famous is undoubtedly the 1938 Orson 00:33:14.109 --> 00:33:16.710 Welles radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, 00:33:16.869 --> 00:33:20.789 which famously caused panic. H .G. Welles himself 00:33:21.400 --> 00:33:23.559 ever the pragmatist, just acknowledged the stunt 00:33:23.559 --> 00:33:25.700 had increased sales of one of his more obscure 00:33:25.700 --> 00:33:28.619 titles. And Wells himself has become a character 00:33:28.619 --> 00:33:31.059 in fiction, like in the film Time After Time, 00:33:31.140 --> 00:33:33.680 where he pursues Jack the Ripper using his own 00:33:33.680 --> 00:33:35.980 time machine. It speaks to the deep -seated cultural 00:33:35.980 --> 00:33:38.900 impact of his inventions. He died on August 13th, 00:33:38.900 --> 00:33:43.359 1946, aged 79. His body was cremated, and his 00:33:43.359 --> 00:33:45.400 ashes were scattered into the English Channel. 00:33:45.849 --> 00:33:48.470 And fittingly, he had a final, provocative idea 00:33:48.470 --> 00:33:50.529 for what should be inscribed on his gravestone, 00:33:50.609 --> 00:33:52.829 a suggestion he put forward in a later edition 00:33:52.829 --> 00:33:55.410 of his novel, The War in the Air. The ultimate 00:33:55.410 --> 00:33:57.529 final word. delivered with his characteristic 00:33:57.529 --> 00:34:00.069 pessimism and prophetic arrogance. I told you 00:34:00.069 --> 00:34:03.089 so, you damn fools. In summing up this deep dive, 00:34:03.630 --> 00:34:06.430 H .G. Wells' true genius wasn't just predicting 00:34:06.430 --> 00:34:09.010 technologies like the airplane or the tank. It 00:34:09.010 --> 00:34:12.289 was his relentless, lifelong commitment to synthesizing 00:34:12.289 --> 00:34:15.250 scientific principles, ethical Darwinism, and 00:34:15.250 --> 00:34:18.610 socialist political reform through these thrilling, 00:34:18.710 --> 00:34:21.090 grounded narratives. His fantastic inventions 00:34:21.090 --> 00:34:23.750 were always deeply rooted in real -world concerns 00:34:23.750 --> 00:34:26.940 about humanity's ultimate evolutionary and political 00:34:26.940 --> 00:34:30.159 fate. Always. We've seen the impoverished Draper's 00:34:30.159 --> 00:34:32.559 apprentice, the disciplined biologist studying 00:34:32.559 --> 00:34:35.539 under Huxley, the scandalous husband, and the 00:34:35.539 --> 00:34:38.059 utopian visionary who helped inspire the atomic 00:34:38.059 --> 00:34:40.579 age and the universal declaration of human rights. 00:34:40.780 --> 00:34:44.039 It is an immense contradictory and enduring legacy 00:34:44.039 --> 00:34:46.199 that defines so much of how we think about the 00:34:46.199 --> 00:34:48.300 future today. And that enduring legacy brings 00:34:48.300 --> 00:34:50.579 us back to his most ambitious vision for human 00:34:50.579 --> 00:34:53.960 knowledge. the world brain. Wells called for 00:34:53.960 --> 00:34:56.480 a global, constantly evolving, authoritative 00:34:56.480 --> 00:34:59.239 encyclopedia, instantly accessible to every human 00:34:59.239 --> 00:35:01.739 being, reviewed by outstanding authorities to 00:35:01.739 --> 00:35:03.920 ensure veracity. And we've kind of built that, 00:35:03.980 --> 00:35:06.780 haven't we? With massive digital repositories 00:35:06.780 --> 00:35:09.139 and the World Wide Web, information is universally 00:35:09.139 --> 00:35:12.599 accessible. We have. But the question Wells ultimately 00:35:12.599 --> 00:35:15.219 raises for us as we navigate our daily digital 00:35:15.219 --> 00:35:19.159 lives is this. Have we successfully constructed 00:35:19.159 --> 00:35:22.500 the authoritative, synthesizing world brain he 00:35:22.500 --> 00:35:25.219 dreamed of, capable of filtering truth and guiding 00:35:25.219 --> 00:35:28.320 global rational policy? Or have we simply built 00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:30.599 a globally accessible world nervous system that 00:35:30.599 --> 00:35:32.760 just transmits information and misinformation 00:35:32.760 --> 00:35:36.019 and rumor and chaos without the necessary critical 00:35:36.019 --> 00:35:38.760 authority and synthesizing intelligence he prescribed? 00:35:39.309 --> 00:35:41.230 Something profound to mull over as you navigate 00:35:41.230 --> 00:35:43.250 your own digital world. That's been our deep 00:35:43.250 --> 00:35:46.010 dive into the magnificent and messy life of HG 00:35:46.010 --> 00:35:47.429 Wells. Thank you for joining us.