ABSTRACT
As a prolific writer and prophet of optimism and progress, Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) played a crucial role in the history of utopian fiction. After a few stories which expressed his endeavor to wake up humanity and draw attention to the dangers ahead of us, including the disaster of increasing class conflict and the astronomical catastrophe of an earth inevitably cooling off, he projected different fictional blueprints of a world state unencumbered by a history of revolution. His attempts to revitalize the utopian tradition attracted not only a wide readership but also the interest of state leaders. Single-handedly he appeared to offer an alternative to Marxist revolution, Communist ideals, and Fascist politics. In the 1920s and later, however, he clearly overplayed his hand and was blamed for being naive. Nevertheless, his keen interest in scientific and technological innovation as well as his involvement in contemporary political developments made his work preeminently modern. Undoubtedly a man of high intelligence, his weakness was that he wanted too much and too soon. By the time of World War II, he had forfeited almost all credit that he had enjoyed at the turn of the century. He explicitly situated himself in the tradition of utopian writing and must have deplored the strong anti-utopian reactions triggered by his work. The dystopian narratives by Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell were a critical response to Wells’s eutopian fiction as well as to current sociopolitical developments.
