H.G. Wells
A visionary of beyond his time
The Life of H.G. Wells

Wells was born September 21st, 1866

H.G. Wells didn’t receive many praises throughout
his life, but H.G. Wells is the name of a crater on the
moon and he was named an honorary fellow at the
Imperial College of Science and Technology.

Wells died on August 13th, 1946.
The Life of H.G. Wells

A defining incident of young
Wells's life was an accident he
had in 1874, which left him
bedridden with a broken leg. To
pass the time he started reading
books from the local library,
brought to him by his father. He
soon became devoted to the
other worlds and lives to which
books gave him access; they also
stimulated his desire to write.
The Life of H.G. Wells

His early novels, called "scientific romances",
invented a number of themes now classic in science
fiction in such works as The Time Machine, The
Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The
War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, and
The First Men in the Moon
Personal critique

H. G. Wells was one of the better writers I have had
the privilege to read.

Compared to other literature I have read

The Great Gatsby, The Crucible, Farwell to Arms, and
The Scarlet Letter.

I have found that Wells was way head of his time
when it came to imagining the future.

Overall he comes in second to all of the books and
authors I have read.
War of the Worlds
A story that needs no explaining
Characters

Narrator- The narrator is a philosopher, he is one of
the 1st people to find out about the arrival of the
Martians. He has many close calls with the aliens but
he ends up surviving. He is the most important
character and many of the minor characters make a
direct impact on the narrator.
Characters

Martians- The Martians are highly developed beings
that resemble octopus’s, they have long tentacles and
a head that has no body. They feed by taking blood
from living organism’s. They end up dying out
because of a bacterial disease on earth.
Characters

Artillery Man- After dodging the heat ray of one of
the martian’s, this man stumbles into the narrators
garden. The artillery man is smart because he takes
many precautions in order to avoid the aliens, he
branches away from the narrator in order to rejoin
the military at one point in the book. They run into
each other again but by this time the artillery man is
pretty much a drunk who has totally changed since
their first encounter.
Characters

Curate- The representative of faith in this book, he
becomes crazy once he sees the church destroyed. He
won’t part with the narrator, but they have opposite
personalities so they clash often. At one point, when
they are in a building trying to hide out from the
martian’s, the curate chooses to not be quiet and the
narrator is forced to kill him so he himself can
survive.
Characters

Wife- She affects the story more with what she did
for the narrator than what she did. She gave the
narrator some direction on their journey, and even
though when they reach Leatherhead they part from
eachother.
Setting

The story War of the Worlds takes place in many
different locations, it starts off in small towns
alongside the country in England.
Setting

The narrator’s home is in Woking, the first couple
chapters take place in Woking. Once the martians
come they decide to make the journey to the town of
Leatherhead.
Setting

On the way to Leatherhead they stop in many towns
to avoid the martians. The story ends in London
where the narrator see’s the end of the martians.
Setting

The image of the world changes drastically
throughout the book, at the beginning the world
looks just how it does today but towards the end the
world looks deathly and the narrator begins to find
dead bodies all over the place.
Literary Elements

Wells seems to be saying, as he was to throughout his
writings, that humanity is nothing but a cog in the
greater machine of science.

This message comes across in the narrator's tone, in
the losses that the world encounters, and even in the
unexpected way in which the Martians die.
Literary Elements

The fact that the book gives readers a happy ending
when he is reunited with his wife does nothing to
negate the fact that that he does not think of her
while he is out on the road, struggling for survival.

His rationalism is what makes him turn the others
whom he encounters into symbols for society's
doomed framework.

The curate, for example, stands for religion, and
when the narrator sees him crumble psychologically
he realizes that faith is not strong enough to offer
solace when the pressure is truly on.
Literary Elements

In this novel, Wells tried to do what he attempted in
most of what he wrote: to help mankind attain a
wiser, more informed attitude about the future of the
human race.

He wrote to a friend that perhaps such a catastrophe
as a Martian invasion could bring the world's people
to their senses and improve the state of society.
Summary

The book starts off with explosions being witnessed
on Mars. That creates some talk within the scientific
community, so when a meteor lands in Horsell
Common just southwest of London, many people
decide to investigate. The narrator if the story who is
never named, goes and checks it out and discovers
that it is a cylinder from outer space.
Summary

The cylinder opens and out pop an alien race of
martians. At first they have difficulty coping with the
earth’s atmosphere, but when deputies tried to get
close to the cylinder the martians zap them with their
heat rays. This scares the narrator enough to decide
to make him move to Leatherhead until the threat is
averted.
Summary

Once he arrives there he realizes that the martians
have created tripods that allow them to move freely
on earth, this shows him that the martians are
actually quite intelligent. The narrator meets many
friends on his journey, no one person really stands
out as someone that helped him during his voyage.
Summary

More cylinders begin arriving all over Europe, and
the a martian vegetation begins to grow that takes
over all plants that human’s rely on, making the
human race essentially second tier compared to these
new martians.
Summary

The narrator finds himself in an abandoned building
with the curate, who is explained more in depthly in
the characters section of my presentation. The
narrator ends up having to kill the curate to protect
himself from the martians, even though the martians
flee soon after he kills his comrad.
Summary

The narrator is all alone and decides to try to take his
own life by trying to head straight for the Martians.
Summary

he would’ve succeeded if all the martians weren’t
dead from a pathogenic bacteria. After this, society
returns to normal and they now know that the
universe is much larger than they ever could’ve
anticipated.
Personal critique

I liked the book War of the Worlds because it was an
interesting difference between the book and the
movie. I really liked the movie so seeing how the
book differed from the film was a new experience.
The characters in the book were all fun to read about
in their own way, and the plot contained many crazy
situations that were great to read about. I would
recommend reading this book to other people,
especially if you have seen the movie!
The Time Machine
This is to be presented in one day :
Yesterday
Characters

The Time Traveler- The narrator refers to him in this
name throughout the book, never once mentioning a
real name. He resides in London, and he is a creative
man who invents a time machine.
Characters

Narrator- The narrator’s name is Mr. Hillyer, he is a
dinner guest of the time traveler one night and
decides to return the next day out of sheer curiosity.
Characters

Weena- Weena is one of the people that the time
traveler discovers on his journeys through time, she is
one of the Eloi. The time traveler explains that is
difficult to distinct between genders when looking at
Eloi people, but he seems very sure that Weena is a
female. The time traveler and Weena develop a bond
after he saves her from drowning.
The Time MachineSetting

The story takes place in a few locations, the first one
being the time traveler’s house, where he is
explaining his theory of time travel.

The story shifts settings when the time traveler begins
to time travel.

The setting zaps to 802,701 AD in a world where
there are fading buildings and little people called Eloi
and Morlocks.
Literary Elements

Major themes between the Eloi and Morlock races.

The story is often perceived from a Darwinian
perspective

The Time Traveller allege that the contradictory
characteristics of the Eloi and Morlock exist within
the individual and are held together by love and
academic interest.
Literary Elements

Social class was a theme in Wells' The Time Machine
in which the Time Traveler speaks of the future
world, with its two races, having evolved
Literary Elements

Even now, does not a worker live in such artificial
conditions as practically to be cut off from the
natural surface of the earth?

Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people. is
already leading to the closing, in their interest, of
considerable portions of the surface of the land.

rich assured of their wealth and comfort, and the rest
of humanity assigned to lifelong toil
Summary

The story begins when the time traveler is explaining
to some of his dinner guests his theory of time
traveling. The dinner ends and they come back soon
to find that the time traveler has been using his time
machine since there last dinner.
Summary

He goes to 802,701 AD where he encounters two
differents types of people, the Eloi who are friendly
and live above ground, and the Morlocks who are
evil creatures that live underground.

The time traveler has a theory that the human race
divided in two at one point and the Morlocks are the
lower class workers and the Eloi’s are upper class
people who have always lived very comfortable lives.
Summary

The time traveler has his time machine stolen by the
Morlocks, after befriending a girl named Weena he
decides to confront the Morlocks about his stolen
time machine. The morlocks attack him and he
cannot defend himself for long, leading him to
retreat.
Summary

After his retreat he comes to the conclusion that the
Morlocks only have one weakness, and that is that
they are afraid of fire. Once the Morlocks hunt him
down, the time traveler starts a fire, leading to the
death of many Morlocks, but sadly his friend Weena
passes away as well.
Summary

After this battle the Morlocks catch him, they show
the time traveler his time machine and he
immediately jumps on it to escape that time period
and the Morlocks forever. Before he arrives home he
stops twice more throughout the future, once a few
years down the road where he lands on a beach and
his attacked by giant crabs.
Summary

His final stop is thirty million years in the future
where the only life left on earth is a big black blob
with tentacles. After this he returns home to rest for a
bit, having only been gone for three hours in normal
time. The next day he leaves again for another
journey, only this time he never comes back.
Personal critique

The Time Machine was a fantastic book. It was very
condensed and I couldn’t tell if I liked that aspect or
not, but I’ve never read a book that was under 200
pages that has contained so much material, and good
material at that. I would suggest reading this to my
classmates, it is an easy read yet still a book that can
make you think.
Works credited

War of the Worlds
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
By: Dylan
H. G. Wells biography
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Power Point Slides and layout
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
By: Luke
By: Luke
The Time Machine

By: Kelly