Overview

H.G. Wells has been branded as a novelist who betrayed his vocation. But Wells saw himself as what we would today call a public intellectual. How credible is this claim? And what happens when we look at him in this way? So typecast has Wells’s reputation become that neither of these questions has been previously asked, but when we look at Wells as a thinker we find a whole new quality to his later works, which have invariably been dismissed by literary scholars as of low quality or even not worth reading. In particular, Wells’s prescience as a prophet of our current environmental problems stands out - for example, he foresaw anthropogenic climate change as early as 1931. Popular conceptions of Wells as racist, imperialist and eugenicist are also challenged. What emerges is a new perspective on a significant public intellectual and- pioneering prophet of the twenty-first century.

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9781805966913

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Reviews

'H.G. Wells and Twenty-First Century is destined to remain a faithfully researched milestone in our understanding of Wells’s worldview and legacies, while also opening up brand new directions for modern research. If in the end, in John Batchelor’s words, Wells was equally a ""polemicist and a mass of contradictions"", this is precisely the study we had long been waiting for.' Tiziano De Marino, The Wellsian '... This book is a tremendous achievement. It authoritatively reviews and updates the status questionis in many areas of Wells’s thought... the book also provides excellent bibliographical guidance, a chronological map to the achievements of a truly impressive mind.' Alfredo MacLaughlin, Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy 'Cooke’s book is a major contribution to Wells studies. It is lucidly written, has been well edited and presented by Liverpool University Press, and is consequently a pleasure to read... Bill Cooke has written the best book on Wells that I have read for some time.' Nick Ruddick, Science Fiction Studies ‘And ranging through it all, is the work’s thesis, which it proved swimmingly: Wells’s living resonance today.’ Nicholas E Meyer, Freethinker

Author Information

Bill Cooke was formerly a teacher of philosophy at Priestley College, Warrington. He is the author of numerous books including A Rebel to His Last Breath: Joseph McCabe and Rationalism (2001), The Blasphemy Depot: A Hundred Years of the Rationalist Press Association (2004), A Dictionary of Atheism, Skepticism, and Humanism (2006) and A Wealth of Insights: Humanist Thought Since the Enlightenment (2011).

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