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Acquired October 2013
Read August 2014
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In the Days of the Comet
by H. G. Wells
This H. G. Wells novel is hard to like, though he carries it out with his usual attention to detail. We get a protagonist who doesn't see what's important, our man William who scrabbled along. What makes this work as well as it does is its retrospective tone: the world of today seems very strange when viewed from the future, and Wells emphasizes this with the kind of explanations our narrator has to provide. But then a magic gas makes everyone act perfectly rationally from then on, and a new society free of the problems of the old one is born. (There's sort of a subgenre of apocalypses caused by strange gases at the turn of the century:
In the Days of the Comet is preceded by M. P. Shiel's
The Purple Cloud, and followed by Arthur Conan Doyle's
The Poison Belt. I don't know if there are others.) In terms of providing practical solutions, there's not a lot going on, but I think this book is more about suggesting a way of thinking and seeing that would do all of us some good. Or so Wells thinks; anyone who has read a lot of Wells will be unsurprised to learn that according to the book, free love is the way to go.
I just finished In the Days of the Comet. I found a 70's era paperback box set of Wells in great condition, never read, at a thrift store recently. First I read Invisible Man which was very good. This book was a difficult read as it is very plodding before the Comet and afterward the payoff was, I thought, disappointing. I do like Wells descriptions of a grim and heartless Victorian world - It reminded me of our current world.
ReplyDeleteI was very confused by the ending. The narrator who is a young man of the post comet era seems appalled at Williams description of his "free love" in the new world. Youd think that would be unremarkable to the new generation? He reacted like a prudish Victorian. Strange.