Wells, H.G.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), English novelist and journalist. Wells is known for his science fiction, his satirical novels and his popularized accounts of history and science. The first great writer of science fiction, H.G. Wells is author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. He also wrote sociological books in which he criticized existing society and presented his remedies: internationalism, socialism and the advancement and proper use of science. In later works, he proposed government by supermen and a new world religion based on physics. Toward the end of his life, Wells thought that man's scientific advances were totally outdistancing his intellectual and social development, and he expressed this in his last work, Mind at the End of its Tether. Deliberately aiming to achieve greatness as a prophet, journalist and spokesman for progress, rather than as a novelist, Wells was considered to possess one of the most vigorous intellects of his period in England.