War of the Worlds & The Time Machine - Couverture souple

H. G. Wells was born Herbert George in Bromley, Kent, England, on September 21, 1866. His father was a professional cricketer and sometimes shopkeeper, his mother a former lady's maid. Although "Bertie" left school at fourteen to become a draper's apprentice (a life he detested), he later won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, where he studied with the famous Thomas Henry Huxley. He began to sell articles and short stories regularly in 1893. In 1895, his immediately successful novel rescued him from a life of penury on a schoolteacher's salary. His other "scientific romances"—The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901), and The War in the Air (1908)—won him the distinction as the father of science fiction. Henry James saw in Wells the most gifted writer of the age, but Wells, having coined the phrase "the war that will end war" to describe World War I, became increasingly disillusioned and focused his attention on educating mankind with his bestselling Outline of History (1920) and his later utopian works. Living until 1946, Wells witnessed a world more terrible than any of his imaginative visions, and he bitterly observed: "Reality has taken a leaf from my book and set itself to supercede me."

Armchair Fiction presents extra large editions of classic science fiction double novels. Both novels in this grand double novel are all-time classics by H. G. Wells. The first novel, “War of the Worlds” is the ultimate tale of invasion from outer space. Earth is ravaged by an invading armada of Martians. Armed with their death machines, Mars appears certain to bring the human race to a violent end. A true masterpiece! The second novel, another unforgettable Wells gem, is “The Time Machine.” A machine to travel through time is invented! Earth’s first time traveler then ventures eons into the future where he finds a world wildly different than his own. It was a world seemingly inhabited by a docile, childish race of humans. Befriending him was the beautiful young Weena. But who were “the Morlocks” and what horrible fate did they plan for the innocent children who now inhabited the Earth? Both novels in this edition are must-haves for any sci-fi enthusiast.