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  • Published: 1 September 2004
  • ISBN: 9780812970753
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $35.00

Selected Stories of H. G. Wells



Unique Features: Edited and introduced by Ursula Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin’s selection of twenty-six stories showcases H. G. Wells’s genius and reintroduces readers to his singular talent for making the unbelievable seem utterly plausible.
 
He envisioned a sky filled with airplanes before Orville Wright ever left the ground. He described the spectacle of space travel decades before men set foot on the moon. H. G. Wells was a visionary, a man of science with an enduring literary touch, and his originality and inventiveness are fully on display in this essential collection.
 
“Wells imagined both dark and bright futures because his creed allowed both while promising neither, and because the eighty years of his life were years of immense intellectual and technological accomplishment and appalling violence and destruction.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, from the introduction
 
“Everything one imagines in the way of genius and fun.”—Rebecca West

Including these stories:

“A Slip Under the Microscope”
“The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes”
“The Plattner Story”
“Under the Knife”
“The Crystal Egg”
“The New Accelerator”
“The Stolen Body”
“The Argonauts of the Air”
“In the Abyss”
“The Star”
“The Land Ironclads”
“A Dream of Armageddon”
“The Lord of the Dynamos”
“The Valley of Spiders”
“The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”
“The Man Who Could Work Miracles”
“The Magic Shop”
“Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland”
“The Door in the Wall”
“The Presence by the Fire”
“A Vision of Judgment”
“The Story of the Last Trump”
“The Wild Asses of the Devil”
“Answer to Prayer”
“The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper”
“The Country of the Blind”

  • Published: 1 September 2004
  • ISBN: 9780812970753
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $35.00

About the author

H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1866. After an education repeatedly interrupted by his family’s financial problems, he eventually found work as a teacher at a succession of schools, where he began to write his first stories.
Wells became a prolific writer with a diverse output, of which the famous works are his science fiction novels. These are some of the earliest and most influential examples of the genre, and include classics such as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Most of his books very well-received, and had a huge influence on many younger writers, including George Orwell and Isaac Asimov. Wells also wrote many popular non-fiction books, and used his writing to support the wide range of political and social causes in which he had an interest, although these became increasingly eccentric towards the end of his life.
Twice-married, Wells had many affairs, including a ten-year liaison with Rebecca West that produced a son. He died in London in 1946.

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