HG Wells

HG Wells, Hitler and Tasmania’s dark past: the stories behind arrival cards in Australia’s National Archives

Archive material captures arrival in Australia of celebrities including Princess Anne, Fred Astaire and four-year-old Russell Crowe, as well as The War of the Worlds author’s explosive 1938-39 visit

Tory Shepherd

16, Sep, 2023 @12:00 AM

The baked benefits of sharing our car | Brief letters

Brief letters: Good neighbours | Woking’s wonders | Tuning in and out | The late post | Word blindness

11, Jun, 2023 @4:49 PM

The Time Machine: A Comedy review – malfunctioning merriment

This riff on HG Wells’s sci-fi novella has a sharp cast but relies on a wearisome play-within-a-play concept and lacks momentum

Chris Wiegand

03, Mar, 2023 @8:00 AM

The Time Machine review – radical feminist retelling of the HG Wells classic looks to the future

The four actors are less interested in Wells’s sci-fi fantasy than in the divisions of today as they stock up for the coming apocalypse with onions, tampons and jars of sperm

Mark Fisher

17, Oct, 2022 @7:00 AM

The Invisible Man review – therapy and sound effects in HG Wells update

Despite clever stagecraft and the best efforts of four committed young actors, the drama and bite of Philip Correia’s new adaptation is muffled

Clare Brennan

13, Feb, 2022 @11:30 AM

The Invisible Man review – HG Wells in the psychiatrist’s room

Troubled young man Simon Griffin is invisible to society even before the vanishing act, while his therapist has the opposite problem

Mark Fisher

07, Feb, 2022 @12:01 AM

From science fiction to dystopian fact | Letters

Letters: We shouldn’t be surprised when sci-fi writers correctly predict the future, says Garth Groombridge, while Frances Starbuck detects the shadow of Edgar Allan Poe looming over the current crisis at No 10

Letters

04, Feb, 2022 @5:38 PM

The Guardian view on prescience in novels: reading the future | Editorial

Editorial: Literature can be surprisingly accurate in predicting what lies ahead

Editorial

30, Jan, 2022 @6:25 PM

Julian Fellowes turns Half a Sixpence rewrite Kipps into winning fun

In a surprisingly class-conscious stage adaptation of the HG Wells-inspired musical from the Downton Abbey creator on Sky, Charlie Stemp radiates kindly innocence

Michael Billington

30, Dec, 2021 @1:48 PM

Elif Shafak: ‘Reading Orlando was like plunging into a cold but beautifully blue sea’

The novelist on her love of Virginia Woolf, being inspired by HG Wells and how Jack Kerouac’s ego puts her off his books

Elif Shafak

05, Nov, 2021 @10:00 AM

The Young HG Wells review – the shape of things to come

Claire Tomalin’s restrained biography of the prolific writer and philanderer’s early years lets readers reach their own verdict on his life and deeds

Anthony Cummins

02, Nov, 2021 @7:00 AM

Elif Shafak: How the 21st century would have disappointed HG Wells

Delivering this year’s HG Wells lecture, the author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World celebrates the late science fiction author’s dedication to fighting inequality