H. G. Wells
1866–1946
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Herbert George Wells grew up in a Kent draper's shop and clawed his way to science through scholarships, studying biology under Darwin's champion T. H. Huxley. That scientific training became the engine of a fiction no one had written before.
Between 1895 and 1901 he invented modern science fiction almost single-handedly: The Time Machine (1895) introduced the time traveler; The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) horrified with vivisection; The Invisible Man (1897) turned physics into tragedy; and The War of the Worlds (1898) brought Martian tripods to the Surrey suburbs — establishing the alien-invasion story.
Wells was also a prophet of the modern world beyond fiction: a socialist who sketched atomic war, the tank and a world state decades before they arrived, and whose bestselling The Outline of History (1920) tried to give humanity a single story.
Frequently asked
What did H. G. Wells invent?
Between 1895 and 1901 he invented modern science fiction almost single-handedly: The Time Machine (1895) introduced the time traveler, The Invisible Man (1897) turned physics into tragedy, and The War of the Worlds (1898) brought Martian tripods to the Surrey suburbs.
Did H. G. Wells have a scientific background?
Yes — he grew up in a Kent draper's shop and won scholarships to study biology under T. H. Huxley, Darwin's champion. That scientific training became the engine of his fiction.
What did H. G. Wells write besides science fiction?
He was a prophet of the modern world: a socialist who sketched atomic war, the tank and a world state decades before they arrived, and author of the bestselling popular history The Outline of History (1920).
Why it matters today
Every time-travel story, alien invasion and mad-scientist tale descends from Wells — he wrote the grammar of science fiction, and its vocabulary (time machine, Martian tripods) passed straight into the language.
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