The times., 1899-06-11
Minor Eiction.

H. G. Wells, author of 1.-THE War of the
Worlds" has ventured in a direction
somewhat new for him, although not new
to the public. He has written a romance
of the twenty-frst century.
Since and before Bellamy's Looking
Backward" numerous writer's have sue
cumbed to the temptation of setting their
romance clocks ahead and describing the
conditions which they think are likely to
obtain in the future, and it is little pa
thetic to read Mr.. Wells attempt in this
the Martian invasion of the earth was so
daring and original in conception and Vas
worked out in so mastery a manner that
one had a right TO expect that he would
either refrain from touching the Looking
Backward" type of romance at all or co
1t extremely well. And he has not full
filled either expectation.
His new book, When the Sleeper
Wakes" is built around a plot which.
though novel, is not very strong. He con-
ceives the idea of man who becomes un-
| conscious and sleeps through two full CEN
| turies, while his property, and one or two
bequests left him by wealthy friends, ac-
cumulate and are developed by a gigantic
-
ruling in his name. This. of course. is
radically different from Bellamy's coneep-
| tion of the ultimate triumph of socialism.
| The sleeper finally wakes to find the whole
world in the clutches of a vast economic
despotism. something like that described in
| Ignatius Donnelly's Caesars Column" 4
democratic party ostensibly fights for him,
| that the masses may be ruled by him for
the good of all; opposed to this party is
1 IA, Ill -. ,.nt,
seeks to kill him when it finds that he can
not be easily managed. Through the whole
book he is more or less the puppet of Cir
| cumstances. There is a great deal of talk
| about wonderful modern inventions and
cable tracks spider webbing the air, and
aeropanes and aerophiles, but that is
merely the local color of the romance.
| The thing has not the matter-of-fact re-
| ality of Bellamy's book, nor the fantastic
and beautiful idealism of William Morris
| News from Nowhere" nor the sombre,
tragic thrill of Donnelly's melodrama, nor
the delicate satire of "A Traveller from AL
truria," nor the solid basis of metaphori-
| cally expressed truth of the authors own
| War of the Worlds" There is no CO.
| herence to it, and at the end, when one is
| expecting a climax, a grand altruistic de-
| veIopment of some sort or other, the whole
business is allowed to tumble into a race
| question or the most Trivial ana lncOnSe-
quential sort.
1t is in no sense to be supposed that
when Mr.. Wells allows his hero to drop a
few bombs into a fleet of airships full OF
Senegambian police, on their way TO quell
a riot, he has thus solved the tremendous
political and social problems which await
him There are two important flaws in
this denouement. If Mr.. Wells wanted a
particularly effective instrument for his
oligarchy or demagoguery, or whatever his
mysterious Ostrog is supposed to have set
up he would better have taken some Other
race than the African for the business
Russians or Mongolians, for example. His
black police" do not fit well in the plac.
in which he has put them. The Other
and greater objection TO this outcome il
this: II Mr.. Wells intended TO make his
book n discourse on the race question ht
should have started out with that idea a
the beginning, and developed the variou:
phases of it as he went along, instead o.
thauling the whole matter in by the ears a
the last moment, apparently for want o
something better to do. AS the bool
stands, II is both shadowy and scrappy
Some day there may arise writer wht
will construct a great romance of the fu
ture, and 1t will be SO great that in som,
way or other 1t will help TO fulii.l its owl