H. G. Wells

H.G. Wells

Born September 21^st, 1866, Herbert George Wells went on to become on of the greatest early science fiction writers. He is best known for his novels The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The Island of Dr. Moreau. As a child his family was poor and his father worked tirelessly to support his family from a small store he owned. A significant moment in his life occurred when he was 8 years old. An unfortunate accident resulted in young Wells breaking his leg but his bed ridden days were subsequently filled with books. During this time he grew to love literature and started to develop a passion for writing. As Wells grew older his family fell on hard times when his father also broke his leg and young Herbert was compelled a seek apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium. His mother accepted a position as a maid soon after and his parents subsequently lived completely separate lives.

As Wells grew older, he pursued his education through a variety of colleges. He briefly attended the National School at Wookey and then served as a student pupil at Midhurst Grammar School.  From here he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science and studied biology with Thomas Huxley. He joined several debating society’s and published The Time Machine in 1886. Soon after publication he married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells, but the couple separated a few years later when he fell in love with one of his students, Jane Robbins. He had two sons with Jane and numerous affairs throughout their time together.

As a writer, Wells sought to incorporate social issues and his political beliefs. It seems as if his difficult childhood stayed with him throughout his life, and his works included many themes involving social justice and the rise of a privileged class. He even went so far as to write utopian novels, including A Modern Utopia (1905). His novel The Island of Dr. Moreau discussed the question of nature vs. nurture.
Class issues were also very important to him. In particular, The Time Machine reflected the growing disparity between the leisurely upper class elite and the downtrodden working class. In his novel, the main protagonist, simply known as the Time Traveler goes ahead about 800,000 years in the future to discover that the human race has actually diverged into two separate species, the Eloi and the Morlock. The Eloi are simple, childlike people who lack any motivation or compassion for one another. They have no need for strength or intelligence anymore so they appear to have deteriorated into small, naive beings. The Morlock are the creatures that live in the ground, also descended from human beings. They are brutish and mean, feeding and clothing the Eloi in order to sneak up at night to eat them. The Time Traveler deduces that these separate species the Eloi and the Morlock are the descendants of the upper and lower classes, respectively. It is this distinction that is important to the H.G. Wells's novel, that the future of humanity is based on extrapolations of current social conditions.

He died in August 1946 in his home in Regents Park.

Relevance to Against the Day

H.G. Wells is mentioned in Against during the section devoted to time travel. Since the success of his novel, The Time Machine, Wells name had become synonymous with time travel and his name is naturally brought up when the Chums meet Plug Loafsley, who has access to a time machine. This sets forth a new adventure involving the Chums as Chick and Darby seek out the time machine and end up on a wild ride. The Chums then head over to Candlebrow University where they include themselves in a series of lectures by about time travel and try to find a working machine. Later, Wells name is brought up when listing the attendees of the First International Conference on Time Travel. His involvement in the book is a bit limited, but he opens the door to the theory of time travel and initiates many professors to talk about it.

Wells's  importance in the books exceeds his name being mentioned in the conferences at Candlebrow. Because of the many political references in his books to the working conditions of the day, it can be argued that Pynchon includes this author in particular to highlight one of his ongoing themes in Against The Day. From the very beginning of the book the Chums of Chance fly over the meatpacking district in Chicago, an area known for exploiting immigrant workers in slum like conditions to power the factories for the upper class. Also, throughout the book there are continual references to the dangers of the rich upper class business men, such as Scarsdale Vibe and the power they hold over lower or working class families. So the importance of Wells has not so much to do with time travel as it does as a reflection of the social stratification and the dangers it imposes on the working man.