H. G. Wells — Profile, Rankings & Fame Trend

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

He invented the future in fiction before it arrived in fact: time machines, alien invasions, invisible men, and wars fought in the air. A biologist by training who turned speculation into story, he planted the tropes that science fiction still mines.

Biography

About

Herbert George Wells was born 21 September 1866 and trained early in biology, a grounding that shaped his Darwinian view of ethics and society. He wrote more than forty novels and dozens of short stories, but the works that secured him were the science fiction he published in a five-year burst: The Time Machine in 1895, The Island of Doctor Moreau in 1896, The Invisible Man in 1897, The War of the Worlds in 1898. He made the impossible feel plausible by anchoring each story in commonplace detail around one fantastic premise—"Wells's law"—earning Joseph Conrad's 1898 tribute: "O Realist of the…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells

said1907

The third peculiarity of aerial warfare was that it was at once enormously destructive and entirely indecisive.

— The War in the Air (1907), Ch. VIII, §1

H. G. Wells

said1905

Kipps was unprepared for the unpleasant truth; that the path of social advancement is and must be strewn with broken friendships.

— Kipps the Story of a Simple Soul (1905) Bk. 2, ch. 5

H. G. Wells

said1904

Great and little cannot understand one another. But in every child born of man, Father Redwood, lurks some seed of greatness — waiting for the Food.

— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904) - Online PDF and Epub

H. G. Wells

said1904

They may fight against greatness in us who are the children of men, but can they conquer? Even if they should destroy us every one, what then? Would it save them? No!

— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904)

H. G. Wells

said1901