Showing results by author "H. G. Wells" in All Categories

"Little Wars" is a set of rules for playing with toy soldiers. Its full title is "Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty". "Little Wars" includes fairly simple rules for infantry, cavalry, and naval artillery in the form of a toy 4.7 inch gun that launched projectiles, usually small wooden dowels to knock down enemy soldiers. In addition to its being a war game, the book hints at several philosophical aspects of war. The book is written in a whimsical style and gives a description of the game from the view of one of the generals in the battle bombastically relating his memoirs.

It was 1898 when Wells crafted his seminal tale of grotesque tentacled Martians and their terrifying tripod fighting machines commencing their invasion of Earth from a landing site in a sandpit at Horsell Common, southwest of London. It is a suspenseful, entirely believable account of how one man and his family react and survive amidst the initial incredulity, and then the awakening terror, panic, and despair, that overtakes millions of Londoners as the Martians slowly advance.

H.G. Wells takes us on a fantastic journey to explore the deep sea and very strange creatures that inhabit the unknown depths of the ocean in his short story "In the Abyss". They set out to experience adventure, but what they find is much, much more.

A comet speeds toward earth, a deadly, glowing orb that soon fills the sky and promises doom. But mankind is too consumed with greed and violence to care. The Earth slips past the comet by the narrowest of margins, but all succumb to the gases in its tail. When mankind wakes up, everyone is completely and profoundly different.

Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds has done much to obscure the real brilliance of the original work. Written at a time when "science-fiction" did not exist as a genre, The War of the Worlds was a new departure in literature. Author H.G. Wells, deeply committed to social improvement in turn-of-the-century Britain, used extra-terrestrial invasion to predict the results of a not-entirely-impossible violent upheaval in contemporary society: for "Martians" read "bolsheviks."

Hailed for over a century as one of the finest science fiction stories of all time, H.G. Wells' The Time Machine is a classic story of adventure, exploration, and scientific curiosity. The Time Machine relates the story of the Time Traveller, a Victorian inventor who creates a machine that allows him to travel to any time period. He chooses to rocket forward into the unknown world of the future, landing in the year 802,701 where he encounters the humanoids descendants of Earth, the seemigly friendly and benign Eloi, and the subterranean and primitive Morlocks.

A spine-tingling collection of the greatest short stories by the father of science fiction, H. G. Wells. 'The Time Machine', 'The Empire of the Ants', 'The Crystal Egg', 'The Sea-Raiders', 'The Door in the Wall', 'A Dream of Armageddon', 'The Country of the Blind', 'Under the Knife', 'The Stolen Body', 'The Plattner Story', 'The Stolen Bacillus', 'The Magic Shop', 'The Inexperienced Ghost', and many more short fiction masterpieces.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. The Red Room is the account of the terrifying nocturnal experiences of a young man who volunteers to spend a night in the haunted red room at Lorraine Castle.

War of the Worlds by Herbert George Wells (H.G. Wells) was published in 1898 at a time when he wrote a series of novels related to a number of historical events of the time. The most important of these was the unification and militarization of Germany. The story, written in a semi-documentary style, is told in the first person by an unnamed observer. It tells of the events, which happen mostly in London and the county of Surrey, England, when a number of vessels manned by aliens are fired from Mars and land on Earth.

The book is, in Wells' words, a "scheme to thrust forward and establish a human control over the destinies of life and liberate it from its present dangers, uncertainties and miseries. It proposes that largely as the result of scientific progress, a common vision of a world 'politically, socially and economically unified' is emerging among educated and influential people, and that this can be the basis of 'a world revolution aiming at universal peace, welfare and happy activity' that can result in the establishment of a 'world commonwealth'."

A captivating collection of 60-minute classic stories by great writers.

Living in the 19th century and facing the impact of Darwin's theory of evolution, H.G. Wells wrote this haunting masterpiece, an evolutionary fantasy. The story's title character, Dr. Moreau, is a shipwrecked naturalist who becomes involved in an experiment to "humanize" animals by surgery. Dr. Moreau has been expelled from his homeland for performing cruel vivisection experiments. On the isolated island, he finds the freedom to continue torturous transplantations and create hideous creatures with manlike intelligence.

When the village is besieged by strange thefts by an uncatchable thief, the clues might lie with the odd-acting stranger. Revealing his incredible secret, he has turned himself invisible, Griffin escapes and seeks those whom he might suborn into aiding him. Driven to darkness by his inability to make himself visible again, Griffin decides to use his misfortune to terrorise others. Greeted with fear and suspicion and betrayed by those around him, Griffin is determined to show just how dangerous an unseen enemy can be.

Who says that you can't have it all? Adventure, romance, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and fine literature? Infinite variety - that is what you find here. Classic Literature has never been presented so approachably. You will savor the chills from Edgar Allan Poe, then smilingly shake your head as a man dupes an entire town. You will hear how Sherlock Holmes solves a case for Bohemian nobility, then marvel as a man destroys his life over a piece of string....

Collected here are four of the world's best-known and beloved tales of horror, suspense and terror: H.G. Wells' "The Island of Doctor Moreau," Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu," and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Few ghost stories are as chilling as the ones written by Victorian writers. Featuring work by H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton, F.G. Loring and Florence Marryat, this second volume of eight enduring stories, some well-known, others less familiar, transport you to a cosy fireside to hear tales of disembodied voices, haunted objects and unknown entities lurking in the shadows cast by candlelight.

So begins The War of the Worlds, the novel that made Wells famous and has enthralled and terrified readers and listeners for almost 100 years. Ten huge and tireless creatures land in England and, using their deadly rays and crushing strength, threaten the very existence of humankind. Wells' classic is not just groundbreaking science fiction, it is a shocking social parable about man's inhumanity to man.

H. G. Wells' classic science fiction work, first serialized in 1897, is one of many invasion narratives prevalent in British literature towards the end of the 19th century. However, The War of the Worlds not only introduces the extraterrestrial element of brutal Martian forces on the rampage but also explores many other contemporary issues and themes.

Mr. Polly is an ordinary middle-aged man who is tired of his wife's nagging and his dreary job as the owner of a regional gentleman's outfitters. Faced with the threat of bankruptcy, he concludes that the only way to escape his frustrating existence is by burning his shop to the ground, and killing himself. Unexpected events, however, conspire at the last moment to lead the bewildered Mr. Polly to a bright new future - after he saves a life, fakes his death, and escapes to a life of heroism, hope and ultimate happiness.

Artie Kipps is destined at the tender age of fourteen for a life of drudgery in the drapery trade … until he unexpectedly inherits a fortune from a grandfather he never knew existed! Enter: A whisky-drinking actor and playwright who persuades Kipps to invest in his play! A down-on-their-luck mother and daughter who promptly see Kipps as a means to escape their (comparative) poverty! Plenty of patronizing, unthinking social snobs!