THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND AND OTHER SELECTED STORIES

H. G. WELLS, the third son of a small shopkeeper, was born in Bromley in 1866. After two years’ apprenticeship in a draper’s shop, he became a pupil-teacher at Midhurst Grammar School and won a scholarship to study under T. H. Huxley at the Normal School of Science, South Kensington. He taught biology before becoming a professional writer and journalist. He wrote more than a hundred books, including novels, essays, histories and programmes for world regeneration.

Wells, who rose from obscurity to world fame, had an emotionally and intellectually turbulent life. His prophetic imagination was first displayed in pioneering works of science fiction such as The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). Later he became an apostle of socialism, science and progress, whose anticipations of a future world state include The Shape of Things to Come (1933). His controversial views on sexual equality and women’s rights were expressed in the novels Ann Veronica (1909) and The New Machiavelli (1911). He was, in Bertrand Russell’s words, ‘an important liberator of thought and action’.

Wells drew on his own early struggles in many of his best novels, including Love and Mr Lewisham (1900), Kipps (1905), Tono-Bungay (1909) and The History of Mr Polly (1910). His educational works, some written in collaboration, include The Outline of History (19x0) and The Science of Life (1930). His Experiment in Autobiography (2 vols., 1934) reviews his world. He died in London in 1946.

PATRICK PARRINDER took his MA and Ph.D. at Cambridge University, where he held a Fellowship at King’s College and published his first two books on Wells, H. G. Wells (1970) and H. G. Wells: The Critical Heritage (1972). He has been Chairman of the H. G. Wells Society and editor of The Wellsian, and has also written on James Joyce, science fiction, literary criticism and the history of the English novel. His book Nation and Novel (2006) surveys English fiction from its late Medieval origins to the present day. Since 1986 he has been Professor of English at the University of Reading.

NEIL GAIMAN has won highly respectable awards for writing comics (like Sandman) and adult novels (like American Gods) and children’s books (like Coraline). He has written screenplays for films, like the upcoming Beowulf. His books have been filmed, like the upcoming Stardust. He travels too much and sometimes writes about it at www.neilgaiman.com He needs a haircut, but has reached the age where he’s happy just to have hair.

ANDY SAWYER is the librarian of the Science Fiction Foundation Collection at the University of Liverpool Library, and Course Director of the MA in Science Fiction Studies offered by the School of English. He also teaches a ‘speculative fictions’ module for undergraduates. He has published widely on science fiction and related literatures, co-edited the collection of essays Speaking Science Fiction (2000) and was an Associate Editor of the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy Themes, Works, and Wonders (2005). He is Reviews Editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction.