H.G. Wells and the Twenty-First Century
By Bill Cooke
2023
First Published
272
Number of Pages
Part of Series
H.G. Wells has been branded as a novelist who betrayed his vocation. But Wells saw himself as what we would today call a public intellectual. How credible is this claim? And what happens when we look at him in this way? So typecast has Wells' reputation become that neither of these questions has been previously asked, but when we look at Wells as a thinker we find a whole new quality to his later works, which have invariably been dismissed by literary scholars as of low quality or even not worth reading. In particular, Wells' prescience as a prophet of our current environmental problems stands out - for example, he foresaw anthropogenic climate change as early as 1931. Popular conceptions of Wells as racist, imperialist and eugenicist are also challenged. What emerges is a new perspective on a significant public intellectual and- pioneering prophet of the twenty-first century.
Author
Bill Cooke
Author · 1 books
Bill Cooke is Professor of Management and Society at Lancaster University Management School. Previously he worked at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, Manchester School of Management, and Manchester Business School, all within what is now the University of Manchester; and at Teesside University.
