H. G. Wells

Le carte raffiguranti luoghi e situazioni immaginarie non hanno alimentato solo la fantasia dei ragazzi. Anche quella degli adulti vi ha fatto ricorso. E poi vi sono quelle carte che non hanno rappresentato luoghi reali ma relazioni tra concetti astratti, come le mappe mentali. Oppure, ancora, le carte che si rivolgono alla sfera intima dell’individuo e intendono attivare processi emotivi piacevoli evocando sentimenti e stati d’animo.
Un’altra categoria di carte immaginarie destinate a un pubblico adulto ha raffigurato luoghi concepiti allo scopo di dare forma a una società ideale.
Queste e altre carte vengono presentate in questo articolo, ispirato dall'idea che le carte geografiche non servono solo a visualizzare luoghi reali ma anche luoghi immaginari, di cui le utopie sono una fonte inesauribile. Al punto che è lecito chiedersi se nelle carte ci sia più realtà o più immaginazione.

Which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles. " —Wells, " The Star "

This essay considers how the representation of deep time affects, and is affected by, literary genres. It takes The Time Machine (1895) as its case study, investigating the ways in which H. G. Wells's work repurposes the conventions of the romance genre as a means of narrating expansive temporal scales that exceed the repre-sentational capacity of the realist novel. The essay's overarching suggestion will be that stretching narratives to the extreme longue durée of the geologic epoch necessitates shifting away from realism, opening new possibilities for genres (including melodrama, epic, and, in this case, romance) that the realist tradition had ostensibly superseded. Understanding how the formal expansiveness of genres can be mobilized strategically, I conclude, affords a critical perspective for analyzing the Anthropocene—a concept whose narrative and discursive patterns concern the contemporaneity of deep time and the present and that could itself be construed as a genre. * * * Imagining what the world might look like in the year 802701 seems absurd. The date is unfathomably distant, some 160 times longer than the roughly five thousand years of recorded human history—but this is only the initial stop in Wells's first major work of fiction, The Time Machine. Wells explained that this immense narrative scope was necessary to his purpose of providing " a glimpse of the future that ran counter to the placid assumption of that time that Evolution was a pro-human force making things better and better for mankind " (Seven ix). The novel envisions a world in which Homo sapiens has diverged into two subspecies—Eloi and Morlocks—a biological process that would realistically take thousands of generations to unfold. Yet the protracted temporality of species change dwarfs the lifespan of an individual to such an extent that for the protagonist to experience it firsthand as an event, or a " glimpse, " the novel must alternately stretch and contract its narrative durée in ways that destabilize its status as a realistic account. Wells's explanation, moreover, hardly justifies the surprising detours that occur toward the end of the story, in which the protagonist is propelled many millions of years forward , into post-and nonhuman time: to an age of weird amphibious blobs; to black seas under a cold sun; to a moment when the Earth stops turning. These latter

Wells are excavations into the earth for developing groundwater, oil, brine, gas, and engineering geology operations (Driscoll 1986; Hunt 2005). Water wells are dug, driven, bored, or drilled into the saturated zone of water-bearing formations (aquifers) to extract groundwater for drinking and irrigation (Barrocu 2014; Campbell and Lehr 1973). Shallow water wells are excavated into lose and soft rocks by hand, or mechanically, mainly in unconfined aquifers. Theyarerarelydeeperthan50–60m,normallywithacircular section of 1–3.5 m in diameter. One supports their walls with masonry or a precast concrete ring lining to prevent collapsing. The lining often extends above the ground to prevent peoplefromfallingintothewellandtoreducecontamination. In dug wells, if the water table lowers below their bottom, one can use the existing well as the fore shafts of new wells drilleddownbelowthenewwaterlevel(Fig.1).Intheancient past,waterwasbroughttothesurfacebybucketsloweredinto
the well with a rope by hand, pulley, or a counterbalanced sweep (shadoof), but today typically by pumping. In Middle Eastern Qanat systems, aligned water wells are excavated down to an infiltration gallery consisting of a low gradient draining tunnel that collects groundwater by gravity flow (Angelakis et al. 2016). Driven wells are constructed by hammering down joint perforated pipe sections into unconsolidated materials. Drillingmethodsdependonpurposes,rockcharacteristics, well depth, the type of samples needed (rock chips or core samples), penetration rates, and costs. Augering methods are adopted in geotechnical engineering and mineral prospecting in unconsolidated materials. Rotary Air Percussion drilling is common for mineral exploration, water wells, and blast-hole drilling. Cable Tool drilling is suitable for large diameter water wells in low yielding aquifers. Diamond Core drilling and Reverse Circulation drilling are convenient to core samples for geotechnical purposes and in geological and mineral prospecting. Direct Push drilling, including Cone Penetration Testing (CPT) and direct push sampling rigs, are limited to perforate unconsolidated and very soft rocks. Hydraulic Rotary drilling rigs are best for oil and gas exploration and production.Sonicdrillingeasilypenetratesinmostgeological formations by fluidizing soil particles. Drilledwellscasedwithsteelorplastic/PVCpipesprevent loose materials collapsing into the borehole. Groundwater from aquifer formations enters the casing through slotted sections. In artesian or flowing wells,the water level rises above the ground level so that groundwater overflows. In contrast, in subartesian wells (Fig. 1), submersible pumps are needed, as their water level rises above the confining formation of the aquifer without reaching the ground surface (Barrocu 2014). Wellpoint patterns are installed for dewatering during construction (Driscoll 1986; Hunt 2005).

The essay argues that the Crakers—genetically modified human beings appearing in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy—should be seen not only as a result of techno-scientific brilliance and power struggle, but also as a product of artistic creativity. Starting with close reading of several passages which indirectly but effectively indicate that the Crakers should be regarded as a form of art, the essay then moves on to the consideration of probable predecessors of the kind of artistic creativity that the Crakers represent. One model for Crake’s artistic creation of human beings is seen in the avant-garde movements of the first half of the twentieth century which tried to combine art, technology and politics to create the New Man. The essay also focuses on the trilogy’s references to the more recent transgenic art, arguing that Crake’s artistic activity should be seen in the light of the criticism leveled nowadays at this form of art. Finally, Crake’s creative act is shown in the context of the classic works of literature which deal with a similar theme, namely Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells.

H. G. Wells was one of the most influential writers of the first half of the twentieth century. Most famous today as a founder of modern science fiction, he was once known throughout the world as a visionary social and political thinker. Questions of global order were central to his work. From the opening decade of the century until the close of the Second World War, he campaigned tirelessly for the creation of a world state, characterised by universal peace and justice. Yet scholarship on Wells has paid insufficient attention to the complex and conflicted nature of Wells’s early views about how to build a world state, and in particular the tensions between his advocacy of a New Republic, formed by the unification of the English-speaking peoples, and his support for liberal imperialism. In this essay I analyse the development of this key theme in Wells’s political thinking. I demonstrate how his views on race, empire, and Anglo-American union shifted over time, show how his political arguments connected to his underlying views about social explanation and language, and highlight how his interpretation of the United States had a profound influence on his ideas about world order.

In thinking the passage from the “all-human cerebrum” (H.G. Wells) to what one might call the contemporary “all-too-human” cerebrum in neo-liberal societies and beyond to the “all-too-transhuman” cerebrum in the cybernetic society, in contrasting Wells’s idea of a new world order with the dystopia of the disordering un-world (Nancy in The creation of the world or globalization, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2002/2007), in considering the prospects of a “world brain” faced with the realities of the “global mnemotechnical system” (Bernard Stiegler), in highlighting the differences between the global and authoritarian instrument of “control” in Wells and the descriptions of the control society by Deleuze, and finally, in critiquing the “unifying of the general intelligence services of the world” in Wells (World brain, Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, 1938, pp. 3–4) and the capturing of the “general intellect” (Wark in General intellects: twenty-one thinkers for the twenty-first century. Verso Books, London, 2017), this paper maps the contemporary prospects of the “world brain” against the backdrop of the worldweariness of the present.

Wells are excavations into the earth for developing groundwater, oil, brine, gas, and engineering geology operations (Driscoll 1986; Hunt 2005). Water wells are dug, driven, bored, or drilled into the saturated zone of water-bearing formations (aquifers) to extract groundwater for drinking and irrigation (Barrocu 2014; Campbell and Lehr 1973).Shallow water wells are excavated into lose and soft rocks by hand, or mechanically, mainly in unconfined aquifers. They are rarely deeper than 50–60 m, normally with a circular section of 1–3.5 m in diameter. One supports their walls with masonry or a precast concrete ring lining to prevent collapsing. The lining often extends above the ground to prevent people from falling into the well and to reduce contamination.

Mediapart, 22 février 2012
David Lodge poursuit son interrogation sur la fin et la mort à travers un auteur-miroir : H.G. Wells. Un homme de tempérament, biographie romancée parue chez Rivages, entretient bien des rapports avec son auteur. Rencontre (en vidéo) avec David Lodge, délicieusement caustique et conjoncturellement moustachu.

Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives constitute one of the most prolific subgroups of the body of texts we call science fiction (SF). Generic conventions, a century of history and audience expectations have outlined the formulaic demands for the SF apocalypse: a major cataclysm, environmental devastation on a global scale, the extermination of human life or the threat thereof, and the depiction of an aftermath are all part of the conventional disaster narrative. Writers in the nineteenth century, which many regard as the ‘birthplace’ of SF, became increasingly preoccupied with the impending doom of humanity. The intersection between iconographies of catastrophe resulted in ‘early science fiction’s vocabulary of disaster from its deep roots in the Christian apocalyptic tradition’.1 Bernard Bergonzi, in his analysis of the early scientific romances of H.G. Wells, remarks in the same vein that this seeming fixation on the formula may have been ‘an expression of the traditional eschatological preoccupation with the end of the world’.

This paper explores the conceptual and categorical difficulties posed by H. G. Wells’ cannibals, tracking the shifting definition of “cannibalism” in relation to “species” as both terms are re-conceptualized in late nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. In anthropological discourse from the 1860s to the 1890s, cannibalism begins as a concept capable of defining categories—offering an index of evolutionary development or even constituting empirical evidence that the human groups who practice it are biologically distinct from their “civilized” observers—but collapses into a flexible classification that can be invoked or denied according to a speaker’s rhetorical need. Wells’ narrators echo contemporary anthropologists in their inconsistent marshalling of evidence for species membership and intra-species predation, so that the pervasive sense of cannibalism in these novels is based not on abstract scientific categories but local and interested interpretation. In this reading, the threat that cannibalism poses is not that modern Englishmen and their descendants may fall back into behaviors proper to lower species, but that such categories as “modern” and “species” are themselves improperly derived. Through his unreliable and sometimes obtuse narrators, Wells displays pronounced skepticism about scientific observers’ capacity to identify, measure, and derive meaning from biological difference.

H. G. Wells’ correspondence, now at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, reveals the wide-ranging impact of his thought upon individuals in all walks of life throughout several decades, indeed up to his death. The ways in which individuals and organisations, inspired by his visions of a better society, engaged with Wells and his ideas during the interwar period (when it has been suggested that his influence was waning), are explored, along with the extent to which individuals were motivated by his writings to try to become ‘Open Conspirators’ working to bring his utopia into existence,. Several organisations were set up with the intention of bringing together individuals working towards the utopia Wells had delineated. The tensions between these enthusiasts and Wells’s own ambivalence to such projects are considered, and also the tensions between different groups of enthusiasts. While it is almost impossible to trace any direct outcomes from the endeavours of these ‘Open Conspirators’, it need not be assumed, however, that they were entirely ineffectual.

Conhecido escritor de obras de ficção científica, H. G. Wells, como muitos dos escritores desse gênero literário, tem a fama de serem como que profetas de tempos futuros. Quando se olha para o escritor inglês, contudo, vemos a humanidade reduzida a refém de poderes extraterrestres e escravos do aprimoramento tecnológico, como no livro "A guerra dos mundos", onde as bactérias derrotam os marcianos, e não a humanidade, ao todo, impotente.

Como corolário da incapacidade dos seres humanos de enfrentarem os próprios desafios, mais complexos com o passar do tempo, Wells foi publicista das ideias discutidas nos altos círculos do Império Britânico que o fizeram ser, além de escritor de ficção científica, também um dos pioneiros na produção de literatura pornográfica. “Seu talento era, como ele implicitamente descreve a si mesmo, um homem com o olhar de um proxeneta para suscetibilidade de sua clientela depravada com fantasias sexuais não tão escondidas”.

Suas três antecipações de acordo com as ideias da elite dirigente que o patrocinava foram 1) armas nucleares, 2) governo mundial, 3) masturbação neo-malthusiana, ou seja, ambientalismo. Armas nucleares e governo mundial vemos agora no íntimo entrelaçamento entre a política bélica ocidental reunida em torno da OTAN e as diretrizes de "crescimento zero", de atentado à soberania nacional, feitas pelo sistema financeiro transatlântico, seja através de FMI, Banco Mundial ou correlatos. São duas forças que andam juntas. Na parte mais "estética", mais "soft" das políticas imperialistas, o ambientalismo como meio de alavancar o "crescimento zero", como nas "tecnologias apropriadas" para a África e não projetos de integração regional com alto grau de investimentos, para dar um exemplo.

Balcanização e não desenvolvimento dos Estado-nacionais soberanos. A prática da chamada Guerra Fria, como no macartismo passado e como no atual, talvez ainda mais intenso (e que sentimos como nunca aqui no Brasil). Profeta do caos, das ideias nefastas dos círculos dirigentes internacionais. Este, H. G. Wells.

En este trabajo se describen las transformaciones de la novela The Time Machine, escrita por H. G. Wells y publicada en 1895, desde su origen, la publicación por entregas, hasta la adaptación cinematográfica del mismo nombre, dirigida por George Pal en 1960 y la obra de arte contemporáneo The Time Machine in Alphabetical Order (2010) de los artistas británicos Tomson & Craighead. Se analiza en particular el rol de la elipsis como generadora del relato, los procesos de adaptación y el rol del lector/espectador en esta construcción.