Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XXXII: The Sandman: Overture: The Deluxe Edition

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 2013-15)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2016

The Sandman: Overture: The Deluxe Edition

Written by Neil Gaiman

Art by J. H. Williams III
Colors by Dave Stewart

Letters by Todd Klein

There have been a lot of Sandman spin-offs over the years. This is the 32nd one that I have read, not counting independent ongoings like Sandman Mystery Theatre, Lucifer, or House of Mystery. But this is probably the only one people were ever really asking for: what was it that left Dream depleted and powerless enough to be captured by a human sorcerer before the events of issue #1 of Gaiman's series? Finally that story is being told.

Overture, first and foremost, is a beautiful book. J. H. Williams III is always a dependable artist, but it seems unlikely to me that he'll ever surpass the work he's done here:

This took me forever to work out, but the lights at the top spell out "FOUR" because J. H. Williams works the chapter number into the beginning of each chapter. For a while I saw "FOV" and didn't recognize the "R" at all.
from The Sandman: Overture #4

And it's not just beautiful, as Williams uses the layouts and form of his art to really tell a story:

Review: The Transformers Classics, Vol. 1 by Bob Budiansky et al.

Last year, I reviewed the components of IDW's Doctor Who Humble Bundle; IDW also has done a couple Transformers Humble Bundles, and I've downloaded the components of both of them and have been reading an issue a day over breakfast, on days where I don't have other comics to read. There are diverse range of comics on hand, and I'll be reviewing them in some semblance of continuity order, beginning with the first volume of the collected Generation One comics:

Comic PDF eBook, 315 pages
Published 2011 (contents: 1984-86)
Acquired August 2014
Read November 2015

The Transformers Classics, Vol. 1

Plots by Bill Mantlo, Jim Salicrup, Bob Budiansky
Scripts by Ralph Macchio, Jim Salicrup, Bob Budiansky
Pencils by Frank Springer, Alan Kupperberg, William Johnson, Ricardo Villamonte, Herb Trimpe, Don Perlin
Inks by Kim DeMulder, Ian Akin and Brian Garvey, Alan Kupperberg, Kyle Baker, Brad Joyce, Tom Palmer, Al Gordon
Letters by Michael Higgins, Rick Parker, Janice Chiang, John Workman, Diana Albers
Colors by Nelson Yomtov

I have a bit of a mixed relationship with The Transformers. I loved the two spin-offs of the original cartoon, Beast Wars and Beast Machines, both of which I followed devotedly in high school. But my attempts to return to the source material have done little for me: I don't care for any single episode of the original 1980s Transformers cartoon I have seen, aside from the 1986 film, which I like not so much for its quality, but for the sublimely unique experience that is watching it: toy robot advertisements meets mythological saga, featuring both Orson Welles and Weird Al. But I always like the idea of the Transformers-- how could you not?-- and with the cheapness of a Humble Bundle, I'm willing to give it another go.

Unfortunately, I think the opening volume of the 1980s Marvel Transformers comic betrays all the weaknesses of the format. While I think the Beast-era cartoons managed to put storytelling above toy-selling, this comic drowns in its toy-commercial roots, driven home by the giant panels where umpteen characters introduce themselves, their gimmicks, and potted explanations of their own personalities:

And, get this, this is only half of the spread! There are two whole pages of Autobots doing this, plus another whole page for the Decepticons earlier in the issue.
from The Transformers #1 (plot by Bill Mantlo, script by Ralph Macchio, art by Frank Springer & Kim DeMulder)

The worst part of it is that little of these introductions even matter! You never hear from most of these characters in any substantive way, and when you do, they're written completely generically-- the little bits of personality they deploy here never matter. This is probably unavoidable by the design of the comic; when you have eighteen good guy characters and eleven bad guy ones, and are constantly adding new ones as new toys come out, it becomes impossible for more than a handful of them, if that, to receive any kind of focus in a 22-page comic book!

The human characters are few and distinctive enough to pop, though not always for the best. There's a kid who's an obvious reader surrogate, "Buster" Witwicky, son of a mechanic but with no mechanical aptitude himself, but I find myself gravitating more toward his single father, "Sparkplug", a grizzled Vietnam vet who is scared by these strange alien robots but still has a heart of gold.

Surprisingly serious stuff, actually.
from The Transformers #4 (script by Jim Salicrup, art by Frank Springer and Ian Akin & Brian Garvey)

I also found myself liking Ratchet, the ambulance Transformer who is the Autobot's mechanic, but I think that might be because I imagined him voiced by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Jeff Combs, who voiced Ratchet in the 2010-13 cartoon Transformers: Prime.

Initially, the first four issues are written by three writers (Bill Mantlo, Ralph Macchio, and Jim Salicrup), but after that, the long-serving Bob Budiansky takes over. I've of two minds about Budiansky's work. He obviously doesn't want things to be stale. While on television, The Transformers was about Autobots led by Optimus Prime and Decepticons led by Megatron fighting an unchanging war, Budiansky is constantly adjusting the status quo. The logical Shockwave assumes control of the Decepticons, and manages to subdue and capture most of the Autobots. The Shockwave-Megatron throwdown is probably the best sequence in this whole volume, but other than that, the old status quo had so little time to bed in, that seeing the Autobots scattered and leaderless isn't all that effective an upset, and the Autobots don't end up with a whole lot of focus.

That said, this is a pretty great issue-ending image.
from The Transformers #5 (script by Bob Budiansky, art by Alan Kupperberg)

Budiansky likes to sprinkle in tales that put some focus on the human element, with mixed results; the trucker whose trailer is stolen by the Decepticons has some potential; the man who finds his life of crime enhanced by his possession of a Megatron locked into handgun mode is much more entertaining. So there's obviously potential here, but thus far I feel like Budiansky and his very varied artistic collaborators aren't really delivering on it.

(One last note of complaint: two issues here feature Marvel-owned characters, Spider-Man and Circuit Breaker, in issues #3 and #9. IDW actually did get the rights to reprint them in hard copy, which was, I believe, a first, but apparently not electronically. I understand that these things happen, but the e-book version of this collection doesn't explain their omission, just cutting from issue #2 to #4, and from page 55 to page 81, without a single comment!)

Next Week: Bob Budiansky does his best-ever work on The Transformers, in Classics, Vol. 2!

Reading Roundup Wrapup: September 2016

Pick of the month: The Marvelous Land of Oz by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young. I read some great books this month, foremost among them being all the Shanower/Young comic books adapting L. Frank Baum's Oz novels. This was probably my favorite of the six, because Marvelous Land's large cast of bizarre characters (Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, Professor H. M. Wogglebug, T.E., the Gump) gave Skottie Young the most to play with. But really, they're all quite good. Shout outs must also go to Last Stand of the Wreckers (the best Transformers comic I've read so far), and the first volume of Doctor Who: In Their Own Words (an oral history of the making of the programme).

All books read:
1. The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers by Nick Roche & James Roberts
2. Redshirts by John Scalzi
3. The World of Flashpoint featuring the Flash by Scott Kolins, Adam Glass, and Sterling Gates, with Sean Ryan
4. Doctor Who Magazine: Special Edition #12: In Their Own Words, Volume One: 1963-69 compiled by Benjamin Cook
5. R.E.B.E.L.S.: The Coming of Starro by Tony Bedard
6. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Eric Shanower
7. Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Manifest by Jim Shooter
8. The Food of the Gods, and How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells
9. The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing by Mark McGurl
10. R.E.B.E.L.S.: Strange Companions by Tony Bedard
11. Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct by Paul Di Filippo
12. Science, Fiction, and the Fin-de-Siècle Periodical Press by Will Tattersdill
13. The Marvelous Land of Oz by Eric Shanower
14. Ozma of Oz by Eric Shanower
15. Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by Eric Shanower
16. Top 10: The Forty-Niners by Alan Moore
17. Road to Oz by Eric Shanower
18. The Emerald City of Oz by Eric Shanower
19. R.E.B.E.L.S.: The Son and the Stars by Tony Bedard
20. The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum
21. R.E.B.E.L.S.: Sons of Brainiac by Tony Bedard
22. Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson
23. Flashpoint by Geoff Johns

All books acquired:
1. Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Manifest by Jim Shooter
2. Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct by Paul Di Filippo
3. Top 10: The Forty-Niners by Alan Moore
4. Road to Oz by Eric Shanower
5. The Emerald City of Oz by Eric Shanower
6. Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson
7. The Omega Men: The End Is Here by Tom King
8. Talkback: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Doctor Who Interview Book, Volume One: The Sixties edited by Stephen James Walker
9. The Life of H. G. Wells: The Time Traveller by Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie
10. Solaris Rising 3: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction edited by Ian Whates
11. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence: After The Long Goodbye by Masaki Yamada

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 624 (down 7)
Books remaining on "To review" list: 79 (up 3)

I'm readin' 'em faster than I can review 'em!

Loss

Within eleven days, I lost two things that were part of my life: my gallbladder and my wife's granny.

I've never had surgery before, not really. I had a broken arm once, I had stitches twice. I never even had my wisdom teeth out. But now I was losing a part of my body.

It's because part of my body had turned on me: I'd had three episodes of terrible abdominal pain, two of which sent me to the emergency room, where I was diagnosed with gallstones, little deposits of fat in your gallbladder that can block a duct if they end up in the wrong place. Mine did; that's what causes the pain. It's the worst pain I've ever been in. After the second attack, I was on the fence about surgery; after the third, which put me out of joint for the next forty-eight hours, I knew it had to go. In the meantime, I was on a low-fat diet, not that it always worked-- the last attack was triggered by a tofu bahn mi, which feels grossly unfair.

In one of my writing courses this semester, I'm having my students write papers about various forms of violence, often papers about how violence is written about. Once they were supposed to bring in writing where someone advocated for or justified violence, like a declaration of war. One brought in a general piece on self-defense, that argued self-defense was like surgery. You cut off a limb to preserve a body; you hurt a person to preserve the social body. I flipped the analogy around-- was it self-defense to destroy my gallbladder? Was it a form of violence?

The actual surgery was pretty anticlimactic, thanks to anesthetic. Anesthetic is weird, it's not like falling asleep. One second I was in the surgery room as everyone busied themselves getting ready, the next second I was somewhere else, in pain, and I no longer had a gallbladder. A part of me was gone, in less than a moment of time.

Some people say that when someone close to you dies, it's like losing a part of yourself. I'm not so sure. I've lost a part of myself. I destroyed a part of myself in self-defense. Watching my wife mourn, and remembering the two times I lost a grandparent, I'd rather lose an organ than a loved one. My gallbladder, according to the pathology report, was a small one, 6.5 by 2.4 centimeters. (Not to mention, "irregular [and] somewhat distorted.") A loved one leaves a much bigger hole. A hole that's possibly bigger than your own self.

Loss of a loved one can be anticlimactic. My wife's granny wasn't gone as quickly as my gallbladder, but she was gone fast. A few hours passed between when my wife got the text that her granny was on her way to the hospital and when she got the call that her granny hadn't made it. (By contrast, my grandfather died across the period of several weeks.)

But even a sudden death lingers. A passing thought (she said, she'll never get to know our children), a visit to her home (it feels strange to enter a space that so markedly belonged to someone, and know they'll never enter it again), seeing her body at the funeral home (I always find bodies weirdly lifelike, because of course they are our lives), can all spark the loss again. The only way the loss of my organ lingers emotionally is in the sense of joy I experience when I bite down into a hamburger again.

The loss of an organ occurs in a moment, and heals pretty quickly (my last steri-strip fell off the same day we heard about her granny), but the loss of a loved one remains an open wound much longer. And the hole that's left behind is the size of a lifetime.

H. G. Wells at 150: The Early Fiction of H. G. Wells by Steven McLean

One last H. G. Wells-related text in my massive backlog of unreviewed books for my continuing celebration of Wells's 150th, this one not by the man but about him:

Hardcover, 242 pages
Published 2009

Borrowed from the library
Read January 2013

The Early Fiction of H. G. Wells: Fantasies of Science
by Steven McLean

Steven McLean is part of a group of Victorianist literary scholars of serial publication. When discussing the writings of H. G. Wells, for example, he doesn't consider them as sort of Platonian ideal objects, but as products of the nineteenth-century periodical press. This necessitates not just reading Wells's novels in their serial versions (where relevant), but also reading what other material appeared in those periodicals, and reading what H. G. Wells was publishing elsewhere. There's so much, largely ephemeral, material out there that can illuminate the world in which these novels were being written and read. He charts three stages for Wells's early science fiction: 1895-96: pessimistic Darwinian fables (The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau), 1897-98: recognizable social settings (The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds), and 1901-05: future directions for humanity (The First Men in the Moon and A Modern Utopia).

What you get from all this is a very solid monograph, one that shows how Wells was interested in what science could say about society: whether society was evolving (and how), how science could be used to shape a better society, what role scientists had to play in society, could eugenics improve society, what did evolution have to do with imperialism, and so on. This is a set of well-articulated perspectives on six H. G. Wells novels, the kind of thing that can be a very helpful grounding when you go off to write about those novels yourself. I should cite it more!

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Houses of Mystery and Secrets, Part XVIII: House of Secrets Omnibus

Comic hardcover, 733 pages
Published 2013 (contents: 1996-2001)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2016

House of Secrets Omnibus

Writer: Steven T. Seagle

Artists: Teddy Kristiansen, D'Israeli, Guy Davis, Duncan Fegredo, Christian Højgaard, Dean Ormston, The Pander Bros.
Colorist: Bjarne Hansen

Letterer: Todd Klein

About two years ago, I read Foundation, the collection of the first five issues of the 1990s revival of House of Secrets. At the time, the omnibus of all 25 issues plus assorted extras had recently come out but I was unable to source it via interlibrary loan, but on this pass back through Sandman tie-ins I was able to finally secure it. It's a mammoth work: at 733 pages of story, plus unnumbered behind-the-scenes pages, you could really do damage to someone else with this book. Or to yourself if you carry it around in a backpack.

There's a lot to take in here, so probably this review will spiral out of control; I'll begin by not reviewing the opening arc Foundation again, since I already have. (Click on the link in the first paragraph if you care.) I should note that the issues are reordered from publication order here, apparently hitting some kind of ideal reading order, and I read them in the order they're placed here. As a result, book opens not with Foundation, but with what was originally issue #7, "Blueprint: Elevation A," which chronicles the building of the house that eventually became the House of Secrets, intertwining tales of the architect who designed the house, the actual builder of the house and the owner's wife, the House itself, an Indian tribe who used to own the land it was built on, and the blueprint. As you might imagine if you've ever read a 1990s Vertigo comic, they're all dark stories that end in tragedy, but they entertain in a sort of macabre Twilight Zone fashion.

The story rotates through each story, one half-page panel at a time, each with its own distinctive style of lettering.
from House of Secrets vol. 2 #7 (art by Teddy Kristiansen)

Foundation is followed by The Book of Law, a six-part story that fills in the backstories of the dead souls who make up Rain Harper's fellow members of the Juris, the mysterious court in the House's pantry who judge people for the secrets they hold. These are Digol, a Babylonian warlord-turned-court-official; Ruby, a black woman from the 1960s South who gets involved with a white man; Pfaultz, a Middle Ages charlatan who exploits fears of the plague to get money and sex; NiAn, the wife of a dead Japanese warlord suspected of his murder; Clius, a young Roman who gets sexually involved with the Emperor; and the concept of the number five. I liked most of these stories on their own merits-- each draws a nice, one-issue tragedy, some about sweet characters (Ruby) and some about genuinely awful ones (Pfaultz). Though Teddy Kristiansen drew most issues of House of Secrets, The Book of Law lets some guest artists step in to enhance each story with its own distinctive tone, most successfully, Guy Davis (of Sandman Mystery Theatre fame) on Ruby's story. But it was a little weird for the narrative to swerve into covering five side characters after only five issues of the series's regular characters. I think these would have worked better interspersed throughout the series (like the "Times Past" segments of Starman) as opposed to all at once.

Review: Doctor Who: Genesys by John Peel

Mass market paperback, 230 pages
Published 1991

Acquired March 2010
Read June 2016

The New Doctor Who Adventures: Timewyrm: Genesys
by John Peel

This novel, the first of the New Adventures, is somewhere between "not very good" and "terrible." I'm not sure where, but even at 230 pages, it was a slog. The Doctor and Ace wander around slowly for a long time doing things that don't really matter, and the ending is a load of nonsense where the seventh Doctor has to become the third to do some technobabble stuff. That the Doctor could be searching for the Timewyrm and then not know who this mysterious goddess entity in ancient Mesopotamia is beggars belief. Even without the gratuitous nudity (there are two scenes where Ace-- who I am pretty sure is sixteen around this time-- gets naked, and that's just the tip of the iceberg), this wouldn't be a very good book.

Next Week: I'm all caught up on my Doctor Who reviews (still haven't read the next New Adventure, Exodus, yet), so I'll be switching tracks to another reading project: the IDW Transformers Humble Bundle!

H. G. Wells at 150: H. G. Wells in Love

My celebration of H. G. Wells's 150th birthday continues, with a discussion of the "postscript" to his autobiography that wasn't published until 50 years after the rest of it:

Hardcover, 253 pages
Published 1984

Acquired February 2014

Read June 2016

H. G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography
edited by G. P. Wells

This book covers the details of H. G. Wells's personal life omitted in Experiment in Autobiography, and it contains three main parts. First is Wells's introduction to The Book of Catherine Wells, a compilation of his wife's fiction he edited after her death. Then there are the accounts of his various extramarital love relationships. And then finally there's the diary he kept following the conclusion of the Experiment, keeping things up to date.

In my discussion of Wells's personal life after the Experiment, I commented, "a lot was being held back. Not only were there no mentions of his affairs during his second marriage, but there was scarcely any mention of his personal life at all as the book went on. [...] [T]he death of his second wife is revealed in only a couple passing asides, and his children may as well not even exist for all the role they play in his life once they are born." I had known why his discussion of his affairs was being held back, but I thought it was weird how little he said about the death of his wife, Amy Catherine "Jane" Wells. Well, upon reading the introduction to The Book of Catherine Wells here, it's clear why he said little about her death in the Experiment, as he had already said it, and he had said it beautifully.

The account of her life is good enough, and supplements some material covered in the Experiment, but what truly impresses is the account of her dying days. It's sad to see her dying after all the time I spent with loyal Jane in the Experiment and here, and the very last bit, where Wells takes the advice of George Bernard Shaw and watches the cremation, is a brilliant, moving bit of writing from a man who often skirted around emotion.

The middle section of the book is fascinating, but in a totally different way, as he discusses why he loved so many women, and delves into short descriptions of the more important affairs, with Amber Reeves (who, with Jane, seems part of the model for Ann Veronica), Elizabeth von Arnim (who should have been a friend with benefits but wanted more), Rebecca West (with whom, as with Reeves, he had a child), Odette Keun (with whom he built a villa in France as a symbol of their love, which turned quite tempestuous), and Moura Budberg (a Russian spy, whom he wanted to marry). These accounts are a mix of amusing anecdotes (Wells and Arnim had outdoor sex on an issue of the Times decrying the immorality of the younger generation), heady passion (Wells and Reeves decided to have a child together in a fit of defiance at the world that didn't really pay off), harsh invective (things really didn't do well with Keun), stinginess with money (he seems impressed with his own generosity), and dispassionate analysis (sometimes he understands himself, sometimes he doesn't).

Each of the stories is compelling in its own way; Wells is a good storyteller, and I found myself regaling my family with anecdotes as I read. The stories of Reeves, Keun, and Budberg are probably the most interesting, as those relationships seemed to encounter the most difficulties, both externally and internally imposed. The story of how Wells couldn't quite tear himself away from Budberg even when he was certain she was lying to him is gripping, and I really want to read a biography of her now.

You could probably psychoanalyze Wells a million different ways, but he comes across to me as a man obsessed with sex but rarely emotionally intimate. Or maybe dispassionate about sex, in that he likes it, but isn't attached to how he gets it. (He talks of going to prostitutes, including when he's in Washington D.C. and decides to find out what sex with a black woman is like.) Or maybe a man in search of a connection he can never quite find, possibly because he's dissatisfied with whatever he can actually have. His sexual appetite was as capacious as his intellectual one, and though he portrays himself as pretty egalitarian (he's all for everyone having as much sex as they want), there are times it seems he wants a helpmeet for His Great Work, not an equal partner. Jane was supposedly accepting of all his affairs, as she wanted an emotional connection, not a sexual one, but I'd be curious to get a take on Jane not from Wells's own perspective.

The final section of the book is mostly the "Looseleaf Diary," notes about the progress of his life that Wells would update periodically. Intervals range from a couple months to a couple years, and the diary covers 1935 to 1942 (he died in 1946). After I'd spent around 900 pages in Wells's life between this book and the Experiment, it was melancholy to watch him finish out his days. It comes across as much more unguarded that most of his other personal writings, just jottings every couple months about what he's doing these days and how he's feeling. He kept feeling he'd "really said what I have had in me to say" (222) again and again, convinced that this book is the last, and then writing another. He veers between optimism and pessimism; the Second World War brings out his anger at humanity in general and Britain in particular, and he really begins to doubt in the achievement of the World State. He talks about making films, and Moura flits in and out of his life, as he slowly grows to accept that he can never rid himself of his obsession, no matter her deceptions. But he also seems to grow closer to his family and appreciate them more as his life becomes more memories than predictions.

Even though he felt he had said everything he could, he was ready to do more. Referring to the suicide of a friend and fellow writer, he wrote in April 1942, "I know there is work and urgent and important work I may presently be called upon to do, and that I cannot go like that. I am here with all my books and a loyal household at hand" (228). Indeed, after writing that sentence, he wrote four more books, plus a doctoral thesis in science, irritated that his honorary doctorate had been in letters. He never stopped loving, and he never stopped working.

In Two Weeks: More H. G. Wells! More love! Find out the true story in H. G. Wells & Rebecca West!

H. G. Wells at 150: Experiment in Autobiography, Part 5

Finally, my week-long review of H. G. Wells's Experiment in Autobiography comes to an end with a discussion of that obsession of Wells's late life, the World State. Happy 150th birthday, H. G. Wells! Sorry there's no World State yet.

Hardcover, 718 pages
Published 1934

Acquired December 2010

Read June 2016

Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866)
by H. G. Wells

§5
The World State

Like I said in earlier parts of this review, Wells really wants a World State to come into existence. It's impossible to read his discussions of why the World State is what humanity needs, and not recall the current context of Wells's own nation exiting the European Union, which I've no doubt Wells would have strongly praised as a genuine step to the World State.

Wells links his brand of socialism with science, which is nice. For me, I mean, since much of my research concerns those who use scientific vision as a justification for their actions. Wells contrasts his current beliefs (as of 1934) with the ones he held in his youth, when he first came to socialism (to the extent of wearing a red tie!), saying he "did not at first link the idea of science with the socialist idea, the idea, that is, of a planned inter-co-ordinated society. The socialist movement in England was under the aesthetic influence of Ruskin; it was being run by poets and decorators like William Morris [...]. These leaders were generally ignorant of scientific philosophy and they had been misled by Herbert Spencer's Individualism into a belief that biological science was anti-socialist. I do not recall any contributions on my part, in those early years, to correct that misunderstanding" (192). There's probably a book to be written (I assume someone has already written it) on how we got from the aesthetic socialism of Morris's News from Nowhere to the scientific socialism of Wells. (Though I should note that Engels called Marx's socialism "scientific socialism," and I imagine that Wells, based on the comments I quoted above, would disagree most vociferously!)

Red tie? Some kinda socialist!

Wells goes on to sound almost like a Comtean Positivist, proposing the existence of Professors of Analytical History: "Instead of presenting the clotted masses of un-digested or ill-digested fact which still encumber academic history to-day, my Professors [...] would be human ecologists; indeed Human Ecology would be a good alternative name for this new history as I conceive it." These new human ecologists wouldn't be in competition with old-fashioned historians, for "[t]hey would be related to the older school of historians as much as vegetable physiologists[,] ecologists and morphologists are related to the old plant-flattening, specimen-hunting, stamen-counting botanists. The end of all intelligent analysis is to clear the way for synthesis. The clearer their new history became the nearer they would be to efficient world-planning" (552). Perhaps there was never a clearer statement of the idea of idea of a scientific reconstruction of society that I often encounter in fiction-- though I'd like to track down what Wells thought of Comte, because I bet it's not flattering.

Wells predicts that something like human ecology will take over sooner or later, supplanting our focus on history as a series of documents to be memorized and great figures to be canonized, which he says lacks any educational value. I guess this is much like that physics professor he hated, but I don't think what he wanted to happen ever did, at least not in the way he might have hoped for. Wells, in classic Wells fashion, even posits that he's better at history than actual historians. For example, when he discusses his work pushing forward the idea of the League of Nations, he claims, "because I was not a 'scholar' and had never been put under a pedant to study a 'period' intensely and prematurely, and because I had a student's knowledge of biology of of the archæological record, I had a much broader grasp of historical reality than most of my associates" (612-3). The thing about Wells, though, is that when he's cocky, he's still often right; I need to get around to reading The Outline of History and finding out if his arrogance is justified in this case.

Wells actually later wrote a book called The New World Order.
ILLUMINATI CONFIRMED.

It's almost sad to realize to what extent Wells's dream of the World State is not coming to pass. He's decidedly optimistic when assessing the work he and his colleagues have done:

There is no proof that the seed we have already sown has died. On the contrary, the signs of vitality increase. Now it is a series of lessons in some elementary school; now it is a string of broadcast talks like those of Commander King-Hall; now it is a book for children or the newspaper report of a provincial lecture, that comes reassuringly, another fresh green blade forcing its way to the light. The new ideology creeps upon the world now. [...]
     [T]he realization of a new day comes to thousands before it comes to millions; at first the illumination is almost imperceptible, everything is touched by it while nothing stands out; there is a slow leisureliness in its manner of approach that belies its steady and assured incessancy. (624)

Though there are other times he's a little more guarded, saying, "Sometime I feel that generations of propaganda and education may have to precede it" (668). He was hugely disappointed in the path negotiations took after the Great War, thinking Europe had a real opportunity to create a genuine League of Nations that could coordinate human affairs, and instead it was squandered because of timidity and vengeance.

Whatta guy.

At the time he wrote the Experiment, Wells saw two big sources of centralization: the USSR and the USA: "the end sought [in both countries], a precisely more organized big-scale community, is precisely the same" (678). As a result, he arranged interviews with both FDR and Stalin. FDR was the fourth US president Wells met, after Teddy Roosevelt (who liked The Time Machine), Warren Harding, and Herbert Hoover. Wells's impressions of Stalin are particularly interesting: "I have never met a man more candid, fair and honest, and to these qualities it is [...] that he owes his tremendous undisputed ascendency in Russia. I had thought before I saw him that he might be where he was because men were afraid of him, but I realize that he owes his position to the fact that no one is afraid of him and everybody trusts him" (689). Hardly what I would have imagined! Wells seemed to admire both men, but also be disappointed that neither saw themselves or their countries as playing a role in the increased centralization of humankind.

Since his death, the EU came into existence, which I suspect would have furthered his optimism. Now, of course, the USSR is no more, the UK has voted to leave the EU,* and Scotland even voted on whether or not to leave the UK! Plus you have states like Yugoslavia that came into existence during his lifetime but no longer exist. Now, I'm not convinced of the need for the World State per se (maybe if his science of human ecology had taken off, someone could have proven its necessity to me), but it does seem sad that the thing he devoted the last three decades of his life to is if anything further from realization now than in the 1930s.

* Though, Wells did say that he "had become accustomed to looking westward for the definitive leadership of the English speaking community-- and anywhere but London for the leadership of mankind" (678).

Here's the links to all the parts of this lengthy review:
1. Wells in the Twentieth Century
2. Ways of Seeing: Science and Education
3. Wells's Writing and Wells on Writing
4. Wells's Personal Life
5. The World State

Be Back Monday: I'm not done with H. G. Wells yet, because it's time to hear about his many and varied romances in H. G. Wells in Love!

H. G. Wells at 150: Experiment in Autobiography, Part 4

Hardcover, 718 pages
Published 1934

Acquired December 2010

Read June 2016

Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866)
by H. G. Wells

This week, my normal rota of blog topics is taking a backseat as I work through a lengthy review of H. G. Wells's autobiography in honor of his 150th birthday yesterday. (Here is yesterday's post.) Today's topic is:

§4
Wells's Personal Life

One of the things I knew going into H. G. Wells's massive autobiography is that it was only part of the whole. Leaving aside that it was published in 1934 and Wells didn't die until 1946, I knew that Wells omitted many of the details of his personal life to prevent scandal, and that they were eventually published in a "postscript" almost fifty years later edited by his son, called H. G. Wells in Love.

I was surprised, then, that sexual matters were discussed pretty frankly, especially for someone born during the mid-Victorian period: Wells mentions his childhood experiences with masturbation, describes a couple affairs he had during his first marriage (including the one that became his second marriage), and even makes it clear that his first-ever sexual experience was with a prostitute! So I couldn't imagine what was held back for the postscript.

Wells and Jane shared tangerines in 1894, and not again for seventeen years. Wells drew this "picshua" in 1911, positing what they would be like when they got to eat tangerines again in another seventeen years, in 1928. Jane died in 1927.
(from Experiment in Autobiography, p. 379)

But as the book went on, I realized a lot was being held back. Not only were there no mentions of his affairs during his second marriage, but there was scarcely any mention of his personal life at all as the book went on. What takes it over was Wells's obsession in the twentieth century, the coming of the World State. The latter chapters of the book are almost entirely about things Wells said and did in support of this endeavor; the death of his second wife is revealed in only a couple passing asides, and his children may as well not even exist for all the role they play in his life once they are born-- all this in strong contrast to how much attention he gives his parents, especially his mother, in the early chapters of the book.

I think two things drive this. The first is that Wells couldn't afford to talk about his personal life with honesty in 1934. Too many of the things he was writing about affected people who were still alive, and would have repercussions. I'm only a couple chapters into H. G. Wells in Love at the time I am writing this, but I can already see this with clarity. The second is that I think, having been a man early in his life and career accustomed to throwing stones at others' glass houses, Wells erected his own. He really, fully, earnestly believed in the necessity of the rise of the World State and felt that to not devote the latter parts of the book to it would be dishonest, as it seems the World State came to be the only thing he thought about that was not sex, in contrast to the young, imaginative, voracious, polymathic thinker and writer he had been.

Wells sort of tries to paper this over with the subtitle of the book: it is ostensibly about the development of his brain. For example, a lot of the experiences of his youth he ties into his adult way of thinking (connecting a childhood interest in war games with his contemporary disgust at the growing power of Hitler, in one case). Thus, his personal life drops out as it becomes less relevant to the development of his brain. When he discusses politics, he supposes some readers will object "that this is political discussion and not autobiography. It is political discussion but it is also autobiography. The more completely life is lived the more political a man becomes" (668). You may or may not buy this as a justification; I didn't. It's an odd sort of autobiography that barely mentions your children, I expect.

"What is this? Why do the people in the tram car shrink from his presence? Why, in this hot weather sit there in a heap together? Can it be-- Satan? Or the Hangman? Or the Whitechapel Murder[er]? No-- it is none of these things. It is simply a young biological demonstrator who has been dissecting with a large class that particular for of life known as the Dog Fish (scylla canicula). HE STINKS."
(from Experiment in Autobiography, pp. 313-4)

That said, the book is considerably enlivened by the inclusion of a number of "picshuas": this was Wells's nicknames for humorous little doodles he would draw his second wife, usually drawing one every day. They're not all comprehensible, but a couple of them are quite charming. Apparently there's a book collecting a significant number of the existing picshuas; I'll have to seek it out.

Be Back Tomorrow: H. G. Wells on the World State!