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marinessH.G. Wells (1866-1946) is probably best known these days for the science fiction classics The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau and The War of the Worlds, the last probably best known for terrifying various people who happened to listen to it getting broadcast on the radio. But as Wells' biographer Sherborne notes, Wells wrote more than this -- lots more than this -- continuing to churn out tedious novels for most of his lifetime, along with various nonfiction books. When not writing, he hobnobbed with the great (Winston Churchill, Henry James, Joseph Stalin, Virginia Woolf) and the distinctly not so great (too many names to mention), and had sex. A lot of sex.
Wells generally was both married and keeping at least one mistress plus having assorted one night stands and longer affairs at any given time, which is why despite his insistence on using condoms, he ended up fathering two children in his second marriage and two children decidedly outside of that marriage. His lovers were generally fascinating women: novelists, aristocrats, scandalous journalists, probable Soviet spies, women who slashed their wrists in front of him bleeding all over the carpet (well, this was just one) and so on. His involvement with various socialist movements and insistence on free speech earned him the hatred of the Nazis, who burned his books, but he could also, to the confusion of all, pen anti-Semitic and other racist statements, even while otherwise arguing for complete racial equality. (He expelled Germany from the international P.E.N. writers group when that chapter stopped accepting non-Aryan members.) And this is without getting into his shifting religious beliefs.
All of this makes for fascinating reading, and Sherborne does an excellent job of providing a smooth narrative, from Wells' early life as the son of a servant (which gave him a continued awareness of the struggles of the working class) to his exhausted death, deeply depressed by World War II. He explores Wells' often contradictory statements on race in depth, noting that Wells later retreated from and even repudiated his earlier, racist statements – although those statements tend to be the ones most quoted, and the ones which have deservedly lowered his reputation. He looks carefully, too, at Wells' politics, widely criticized by contemporaries as being astonishingly naïve (Lenin added that Wells was narrow minded and petty), and too easily used by Stalin, who was trying to establish an alliance against the Nazis and had no compunction against using Wells, who despised fascism and its leaders, in doing so. If Wells remained generally unaware of the human costs of collectivization (to be fair, not something the Soviets were publicizing at the time), he did have the courage to tell Stalin to his face about the importance of free speech and the press (Stalin ignored this). Sherborne also, sometimes tediously, discusses each and every one of Wells' books, no matter how dull, and does not hesitate to point out the many flaws in the later books.
(I am admittedly mostly taking Sherborne's word on these later books, which I haven't read, but the brief descriptions just do not sound enticing at all.)
But for general readers probably the most intriguing parts are all of the various love affairs and romances. Truthfully this at times, despite Sherborne's best efforts, becomes a little difficult to follow, and Sherborne also has problems with some of the lovers and Wells' two wives, who generally did not leave documents discussing what they thought about the situation. We don't know, for instance, how much Jane, Wells' second wife (and more than occasional secretary) really knew about his affairs, or if she had merrily agreed to an open marriage (not unknown in their social circles) or if she suffered as Sherborne suggests she did. Wells did, after all, manage to secure one divorce; if Jane was as miserable as Sherborne believes she must have been, it seems that Wells could have secured a second, especially since at least two of his mistresses were urging him to marry them. But Jane and Wells did not divorce, and we have no documents saying that she was unhappy at all. Perhaps she was fine. Perhaps she was not.
This does lead to one groan out loud moment, when Sherborne dryly notes that "For once, Wells failed to rise to the occasion" when confronted with a lover demanding sex. But overall, I'd highly recommend the book, with one more caveat that hit me mostly as a woman who occasionally writes the odd bit of science fiction here and there. Which is Sherborne's insistence on seeing Wells in a literary context as almost entirely influenced by and influencing men. Sherborne's list of prominent science fiction authors influenced by Wells is exhaustive, and seems fair enough, but not a single woman appears on it.
I'm not for the moment doubting that Wells influenced, say, Philip Dick, or that Dick has not been an enormously influential science fiction author. But Wells also influenced, at the very least, C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett, who in turn influenced Marion Zimmer Bradley and Anne McCaffrey and Joanna Russ and Ursula Le Guin and Lois McMaster Bujold, who in turn influenced still more women writers, to name only a few of the more famous names. (Also, Ruth Plumly Thompson had evidently read The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, using them as inspiration in a couple of Oz books.) Over on the fantasy side, Edith Nesbit fully acknowledged her debt to Wells; she in turn was a major influence on C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Walter Brooks (more about him coming very soon) and several others.
What makes this particularly odd is that so much of the rest of the biography focuses on Wells' interactions with women. And using the word "interactions" really understates the case: Wells not only interacted with several major women authors, he slept with them (or, in the case of Edith Nesbit, their daughters). He had a passionate affair with Elizabeth von Armin, author of the popular and influential Elizabeth and her German Garden (L.M. Montgomery, among others, found powerful inspiration in this work), and had a ten year affair with the novelist Rebecca West (their child was the later deeply resentful Anthony West). And these are just two of the longer relationships; Wells had casual affairs with many other women writers and essayists. And Wells frequently collaborated with his wife Jane, who helped type and edit his manuscripts, and was herself a fiction writer.
(Gossipy tidbit irrelevant to my central point here: if you ever doubt the interconnectedness of the 20th century literary world, remember this: H.G. Wells and Ernest Hemingway both slept with the same woman, who also may have helped murder Maxim Gorky although this last may be unkind gossip.)
This was also the man who warned his daughter about giving up her career for a man, however clumsily and condescendingly, a man who frequently advocated for women to enter the workforce and who encouraged his lovers in their writing and journalism careers, if less so their careers as possible Soviet spies (Moura Benckendorf), and who supported contraception partly for ecological and environmental purposes, partly because he occasionally slept with birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, but also because he believed that contraception freed women. So it's a rather grating omission, even beyond my desire to shriek AUUUGH whenever I encounter yet another "women don't read/write" science fiction bit. It feels, as I've noted before, like a personal dismissal.
But this aside, it's a nice gossipy book, and a good introduction to the influences on early science fiction, particularly the social and economic forces that helped spark it.
Wells generally was both married and keeping at least one mistress plus having assorted one night stands and longer affairs at any given time, which is why despite his insistence on using condoms, he ended up fathering two children in his second marriage and two children decidedly outside of that marriage. His lovers were generally fascinating women: novelists, aristocrats, scandalous journalists, probable Soviet spies, women who slashed their wrists in front of him bleeding all over the carpet (well, this was just one) and so on. His involvement with various socialist movements and insistence on free speech earned him the hatred of the Nazis, who burned his books, but he could also, to the confusion of all, pen anti-Semitic and other racist statements, even while otherwise arguing for complete racial equality. (He expelled Germany from the international P.E.N. writers group when that chapter stopped accepting non-Aryan members.) And this is without getting into his shifting religious beliefs.
All of this makes for fascinating reading, and Sherborne does an excellent job of providing a smooth narrative, from Wells' early life as the son of a servant (which gave him a continued awareness of the struggles of the working class) to his exhausted death, deeply depressed by World War II. He explores Wells' often contradictory statements on race in depth, noting that Wells later retreated from and even repudiated his earlier, racist statements – although those statements tend to be the ones most quoted, and the ones which have deservedly lowered his reputation. He looks carefully, too, at Wells' politics, widely criticized by contemporaries as being astonishingly naïve (Lenin added that Wells was narrow minded and petty), and too easily used by Stalin, who was trying to establish an alliance against the Nazis and had no compunction against using Wells, who despised fascism and its leaders, in doing so. If Wells remained generally unaware of the human costs of collectivization (to be fair, not something the Soviets were publicizing at the time), he did have the courage to tell Stalin to his face about the importance of free speech and the press (Stalin ignored this). Sherborne also, sometimes tediously, discusses each and every one of Wells' books, no matter how dull, and does not hesitate to point out the many flaws in the later books.
(I am admittedly mostly taking Sherborne's word on these later books, which I haven't read, but the brief descriptions just do not sound enticing at all.)
But for general readers probably the most intriguing parts are all of the various love affairs and romances. Truthfully this at times, despite Sherborne's best efforts, becomes a little difficult to follow, and Sherborne also has problems with some of the lovers and Wells' two wives, who generally did not leave documents discussing what they thought about the situation. We don't know, for instance, how much Jane, Wells' second wife (and more than occasional secretary) really knew about his affairs, or if she had merrily agreed to an open marriage (not unknown in their social circles) or if she suffered as Sherborne suggests she did. Wells did, after all, manage to secure one divorce; if Jane was as miserable as Sherborne believes she must have been, it seems that Wells could have secured a second, especially since at least two of his mistresses were urging him to marry them. But Jane and Wells did not divorce, and we have no documents saying that she was unhappy at all. Perhaps she was fine. Perhaps she was not.
This does lead to one groan out loud moment, when Sherborne dryly notes that "For once, Wells failed to rise to the occasion" when confronted with a lover demanding sex. But overall, I'd highly recommend the book, with one more caveat that hit me mostly as a woman who occasionally writes the odd bit of science fiction here and there. Which is Sherborne's insistence on seeing Wells in a literary context as almost entirely influenced by and influencing men. Sherborne's list of prominent science fiction authors influenced by Wells is exhaustive, and seems fair enough, but not a single woman appears on it.
I'm not for the moment doubting that Wells influenced, say, Philip Dick, or that Dick has not been an enormously influential science fiction author. But Wells also influenced, at the very least, C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett, who in turn influenced Marion Zimmer Bradley and Anne McCaffrey and Joanna Russ and Ursula Le Guin and Lois McMaster Bujold, who in turn influenced still more women writers, to name only a few of the more famous names. (Also, Ruth Plumly Thompson had evidently read The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, using them as inspiration in a couple of Oz books.) Over on the fantasy side, Edith Nesbit fully acknowledged her debt to Wells; she in turn was a major influence on C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Walter Brooks (more about him coming very soon) and several others.
What makes this particularly odd is that so much of the rest of the biography focuses on Wells' interactions with women. And using the word "interactions" really understates the case: Wells not only interacted with several major women authors, he slept with them (or, in the case of Edith Nesbit, their daughters). He had a passionate affair with Elizabeth von Armin, author of the popular and influential Elizabeth and her German Garden (L.M. Montgomery, among others, found powerful inspiration in this work), and had a ten year affair with the novelist Rebecca West (their child was the later deeply resentful Anthony West). And these are just two of the longer relationships; Wells had casual affairs with many other women writers and essayists. And Wells frequently collaborated with his wife Jane, who helped type and edit his manuscripts, and was herself a fiction writer.
(Gossipy tidbit irrelevant to my central point here: if you ever doubt the interconnectedness of the 20th century literary world, remember this: H.G. Wells and Ernest Hemingway both slept with the same woman, who also may have helped murder Maxim Gorky although this last may be unkind gossip.)
This was also the man who warned his daughter about giving up her career for a man, however clumsily and condescendingly, a man who frequently advocated for women to enter the workforce and who encouraged his lovers in their writing and journalism careers, if less so their careers as possible Soviet spies (Moura Benckendorf), and who supported contraception partly for ecological and environmental purposes, partly because he occasionally slept with birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, but also because he believed that contraception freed women. So it's a rather grating omission, even beyond my desire to shriek AUUUGH whenever I encounter yet another "women don't read/write" science fiction bit. It feels, as I've noted before, like a personal dismissal.
But this aside, it's a nice gossipy book, and a good introduction to the influences on early science fiction, particularly the social and economic forces that helped spark it.