Men Like Gods.

H. G. Wells, a prominent member of the Fabian Society and an advocate of utopian socialism, was among the most prolific and versatile English writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, producing more than fifty novels alongside substantial work in social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Although he is now best remembered—alongside Jules Verne—as a foundational figure in science fiction, with landmark works such as The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898), much of his fiction and nonfiction alike engaged with speculative visions of future utopias and dystopias shaped by social reform and scientific progress. Contemporary reception of some of his later works was generally favorable, though Wells himself reflected with characteristic candor that one such volume “did not horrify or frighten, was not much of a success, and by that time, I had tired of talking in playful parables to a world engaged in destroying itself,” revealing his growing frustration with the political crises of his age.