The Truth About Cats and Dogs in Black and White

• H.G. Wells, born in Bromley, UK in 1866, his literary career began in 1895 with the publication of his first novel, "The Time Machine."
• Until this first success his life had been a patchwork drapery and chemist apprenticeships interrupted by stints as a teacher's assistant, and eventually studied biology at London's Normal School of Science under Darwin's "bull dog," the great T.H. Huxley.
• The 1890's saw the publication of the "scientific romances" that were to make him the most successful author of his time: "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1896), "The Invisible Man" (1897), "The War of the Worlds" (1898), "When the Sleeper Wakes" (1899), and "The First Men in the Moon" (1901).
• He turned his writing to social topics, history, and even prophecy with books like "Anticipations" (1901), "The Discovery of the Future" (1902), "Mankind in the Making" (1903), "The Future in America" (1906), "The War in the Air" and "New Worlds for Old" (1908), "What is Coming" (1916), "War and the Future" (1917), "The Salvaging of Civilisation" (1921), "The Open Conspiracy" (1928), "The Shape of Things to Come" (1933), and "The New World Order" (1939).
• A revolutionary in thought and deed, Wells was often the subject of public controversy owing to his attitude on so-called "free love" and women's rights.
• Cheated on his wives repeatedly. He even demanded of his second wife the "right" to take lovers. Wells may have fathered up to five children out of wedlock. His first wife, Isabel, was the daughter of his father's cousin.
• He was a life-long believer in Socialism - the means to mankind's ultimate social salvation. His brand had nothing to do with Marxism and brought him conflict with other leading Socialist thinkers of his day during his brief stint with The Fabian Society.
• The outbreak of the WWI found Wells changing his mind to support this Great War against the "Blood and Iron" Imperial aggression. He reacted by writing the 1914 anti-war and pacifist pamphlet entitled "The War That Will End War." Its title became proverbial almost instantly and is used to refer to the First World War even today.
• Even before the Great War began he published "The World Set Free" early in 1914. It was a prophetic novel about a world war against Imperial Germany and her "Central European Allies" which included a remarkably accurate forecast of atomic warfare and even coined the term "atomic bomb." He was among the first to call for a post war League of Nations but was bitterly disappointed with and critical of the actual League that developed.
• He spent the early part of the 1920's writing "The Outline of History," which like so many of his previous works was also enormously successful on both sides of the Atlantic.
• The 1930's found H.G. profoundly disturbed by the rising of nationalism from Nazi Germany and Fascism in Italy. His critical writings of Imperial Germany and outright vicious attacks on Adolf Hitler and his accomplices earned H.G. Wells the distinction of having his "anti-German" books burned during book bonfires at German universities. The name "H.G. Wells" appeared near the top of a list of those intellectuals and politicians slated for immediate liquidation upon the invasion of Britain by the Nazis.
• He died quietly at home on 13 August 1946. In any appraisal the 20th century, H.G. Wells must be considered among its very most important and influential thinkers and authors.

At the dawn of the industrialisation revolution, long before the technological and nano-technological ages, H.G. Wells invented genetic engineering, the atomic bomb, time travel, and extraterrestrial invasions. He saw the future on such an enlightened vision that he was indeed centuries ahead of his time. It is frightfully clear that he did not write in the fictitious genre in which he was placed. Perhaps he travelled time himself and saw the progression of human societies but his epitaph unquestionably says it best, "God damn you all, I told you so."