The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

This is to discuss March's group read - The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Normally this is no longer in copyright so if you have an e-reader you can read it for free. There is a free Kindle edition on Amazon or if you want another format or to read online, Project Gutenberg has various versions here https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/sear...

I read a collection with The Invisible Man, The Time Machine and War of the Worlds in summer 2015. Very enjoyable stories despite their age.

I have a copy from the library. I have not read it before, but I did enjoy War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.

I think War of the Worlds is fantastic and still reads well today. I've never read The Invisible Man, mainly because I feared that it would seem dated and I wasn't wowed by the film. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised by the book.

I've only read by H.G. Wells, so I'm curious to read one of his other classics. TTM was outdated, but at the same time it featured some interesting concepts that were influenced by new what mattered at the time. The Morlock vs Eloi dichotomy was clearly influence by Darwinian and Marxist ideas of the time.

I'm looking for this one and my first group read.

It's amazing how many genre-setting ideas Wells had.

I read Invisible Man as a High School student....in the 60's. I can't remember much about it. It will be fun to read it again.

The Invisible Man is one of four books I've read by H G Wells, including The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, which I suspect I may have read in conjunction with this group.

I enjoyed The Invisible Man, but I did not write a review and my memory of it is vague.

I'm going to try to fit this in, too. My reading is about like Buck's. I remember being impressed by how Wells handled the hair & finger nails, although not the details.

Read this about 5 years ago. I liked it and I'll probably join in reading it if I have time.

I downloaded a 'complete works of' anthology of Wells' stories from Amazon about a year ago and never quite found the time to shuffle through it. Eventually found 'The Invisible Man' around 31% through, and although I've read about ten chapters now, it's still on 31%. Less a book, more a tome!

Initially, I had mixed feelings about this novel being the monthly read as I feared it might be as corny as the various film and TV adaptations over the years, but I'm glad I caved in to it. Really enjoying so far - I like the irony of the invisible man being (arguably) the most noticeable thing among the locals. They don't even know his name, yet they've all heard about him.

I've no idea how much more is left to go with this story, but I'm hoping it'll take me beyond 32%.

Donna Rae wrote: "I downloaded a 'complete works of' anthology of Wells' stories from Amazon about a year ago and never quite found the time to shuffle through it. Eventually found 'The Invisible Man' around 31% thr..."

You are right, in fact the title is a spoiler as you have to read a lot of chapters before it is revealed he is an invisible man!

Found the ebook online for free, thank you Jo.

It seems that the books I nominate either come in first place or last place.
I read The Invisible Man when I was around twenty. My memory of it is that it is about novella length or a short novel and I was pleasantly surprised at its humorous moments. The writing style was ok but didn't wow me. I'm disposed to give it 3 stars but I might reread it.

I had recalled "The Invisible Man" as a short book too, Ronald. I don't recall when I read it last, but it's been several decades, anyway. Thought my memory was going, so it's nice that you remember it as short, too. Wells never wows me with his style, but the concepts sometimes do considering when he penned them.

Donna Rae wrote: "Less a book, more a tome!"

Ronald wrote: "My memory of it is that it is about novella length or a short novel ..."

Jim wrote: "I had recalled "The Invisible Man" as a short book too, Ronald. "

The Invisible Man is a novella, less than 200 pages.

Buck wrote: "Donna Rae wrote: "Less a book, more a tome!"

Ronald wrote: "My memory of it is that it is about novella length or a short novel ..."

Jim wrote: "I had recalled "The Invisible Man" as a short book..."

Lol! I meant that the Wells anthology from which I'm reading 'The Invisible Man' is rather large - it's a complete works and Wells wrote rather a lot during his lifetime, hence 'tome'. I've no idea how long "The Invisible Man" itself is as I'm reading on a Kindle and it's a bit difficult to tell. The point I was making here was that I'm hoping it's long enough to make some dent in the anthology as a whole, but also because I'm actually enjoying it. Hope that's cleared that one up!

I have read slightly more than a third of the book, and there are some moments of humour, mostly of the physical type.
I agree with other members who said the title was a spoiler. Who else could the mysterious man be but the Invisible Man?

I suppose that at the time of writing, the concept of complete literal invisibility wasn't a very commonly explored one. Throughout the beginning of the book he is still "invisible", because we can't see who he is. I imagine that back in the day it still would have been a revelation to realise that not only is his identity and what he looks like hidden from us, but his entire body is literally invisible!

Joel wrote: "I suppose that at the time of writing, the concept of complete literal invisibility wasn't a very commonly explored one. Throughout the beginning of the book he is still "invisible", because we can..."

True, I didn't think about it like that. Actually knowing he is invisible creates a different interest in the book, how it will be revealed (well how will he not be seen!).

Of the early sci-fi authors H. G Wells is certainly one of the easiest to read. He has good ideas and he tells a story - I don't know whether you can really say he is more literary. Compared to someone like Jules Verne he doesn't go into as much detail of anything vaguely ressembling science which far improves the reading experience for me.

There's plenty of earlier examples of invisibility, but none of them are explained by science. Shakespeare's The Tempest and the short story "The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant come to mind. There's also at least one earlier mad scientist story- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I still give Invisible Man a lot of credit, though. The story is very much about how a scientific idea impacts humanity. It's also about the nature of power. It does an awful lot of the things that we expect of a modern SF novel.

I finished the book and found it sad. Even though the invisible man was completely out of control and violent, and I couldn't see how it could end well, it was still a sad ending. The ending is also a warning- science experiments can go horribly wrong, especially in an uncontrolled setting.

I'm about halfway through, but not enjoying it nearly as much as the first time. It's not awful, just not capturing me very well.

I found the second half of the book far more enjoyable than the first. It's a pretty depressing story all told, but a great foundation for the genre. I gave it a 3 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

If nothing else with this book, you have to be impressed by the amount of time and thought that H. G. Wells has put in to think about what it would like to be invisible. Everything from the digestion of food to walking in crowds etc. The main character is not very pleasant but when he tells his tale towards the end it really serves to humanize him.

Agreed. I like how he focused on the downsides.

The ending also showed how lonely and frightened the invisible man was.

Does anynone have links to reviews of The Invisble Man that came out after the original release?

I want to know if the title was a spoiler for readers at the time and if it was considered to be one of Wells' better books.

So far, I have to say the book has more of an archeological value than a literary one.

I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, perhaps because I wasn't expecting much from it to start with. The point Joel makes about the concept of invisibility in Wells' day compared to ours is an important one that I missed during the actual reading, but it's spot on. Thank you for that.

This book is amazing. The story of the invisible man is unbelievable, but written in the third person in the form of testimonials intends to validate the facts as a real event. The narratives make me wonder: What would an invisible man do? How would people react?
Thank you for this choice.

I'd never read anything by Wells before, so I guess it was about time to finally do it. It wasn't great, but was still interesting.

A better title might have been "The Transparent Ass." He even says: "it's not particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass." Things could have gone much better for him if he'd just acted differently. He could have had fame, and probably fortune, by revealing his discovery rather than trying to use it to steal.

I guess that being transparent is slightly more scientifically plausible than being "invisible", like with a magical invisibility cloak. But the cloak would be more useful, since you wouldn't have to go naked.

Wells covers some ideas I'd never thought of. Like, if you are transparent, then your eyelids are transparent, too, so sleeping could be hard. However, following the same logic, if your retinas are transparent, light will pass right through them without being absorbed by your rods and cones and you wouldn't see anything.

There were many things described visually that would be very hard to capture in a film, but would be really cool if done well. I'm thinking of the food in the stomach, the smoke flowing through nose into lungs, and the dirty feet leaving footsteps. I know there is a 1933 film. The effects were said to be good for that time, but I don't think they tried these harder effects.

Interesting quotes:
* "I'm dashed" he said. "If this don't beat cockfighting!"
* "Great and strange ideas transcending experience often have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations."
* "But -- I say! The common conventions of humanity --". "Are all very well for common people."

I finished it yesterday and I wasn't swayed. This really is about the inventiveness of Wells more than his talent as a writter.

Griffin is just "pure selfishness" and suffers from paranoia. It helps make the story move a long, but those are lazy artifices.

The story was originally serialized, so that might explain why it felt as if Wells made the story up as it was published. The story changes direction as it goes a long. Thomas Marvel entering and leaving the story without making much of an impact is an example of that.

Wells put a lot more thought in invisibility than his story. He obviously thought a lot about being invisible when no one had done it before. This is where all the merit of the story comes from. It is a thought experiment on invisibility and influence many other works after.

It is interesting that at the time a person who got extraordinary powers decided to become a villain of sorts. A bit like the main character of The Man Who Walked Through Walls didn't become a "superhero" and ended tragically too.

Ed wrote: "I'd never read anything by Wells before, so I guess it was about time to finally do it. It wasn't great, but was still interesting.

A better title might have been "The Transparent Ass." He even sa..."

Ed, you pointed out interesting details that were hidden in Wells history. But I believe this was intentional, because written in 3rd person the focus was on the observation not forcing the author to inform the technical details, we are left readers only the imagination.

About the scientist Griffin, I believe that intelligence is not always along with morality. If I were invisible how would I act? Well, first I would not be invisible, second and I would not act like Griffin, because he did everything wrong. He thought he was very clever, but in fact he was unbalanced, selfish, sarcastic, and crazy.

Marc-André wrote: " A bit like the main character of The Man Who Walked Through Walls didn't become a "superhero" and ended tragically too."

I loved that book. In that story the special power is presented as magic realism, or a fable, or fantasy, or whatever, rather than SF. But I find the stories of Marcel Aymé more enjoyable than this one by Wells.

Cassia wrote: "About the scientist Griffin, I believe that intelligence is not always along with morality."

True, they are pretty independent. But it is sad to me that in SF there seems a long tradition of crazy and evil scientists and not as many sane, hero scientists.

I like the stories of Marcel Ayme as well. That author has a wonderful imagination.