« Je voyais maintenant que c'étaient les créatures les moins terrestres qu'il soit possible de concevoir. Ils étaient formés d'un grand corps rond, ou plutôt d'une grande tête ronde d'environ quatre pieds de diamètre et pourvue d'une figure. Cette face n'avait pas de narines - à vrai dire les Martiens ne semblent pas avoir été doués d'un odorat - mais possédait deux grands yeux sombres, au-dessous desquels se trouvait immédiatement une sorte de bec cartilagineux. [...] En groupe autour de la bouche, seize tentacules minces, presque des lanières, étaient disposés en deux faisceaux de huit chacun. Depuis lors, avec assez de justesse, le professeur Stowes, le distingué anatomiste, a nommé ces deux faisceaux des mains. »
Com sua prodigiosa imaginação, o escritor inglês H. G. Wells (1866-1946) cria, em obra de 1910, um futuro sombrio e distópico, muito diferente da era vitoriana em que viveu, considerada por ele mesmo
Edward Prendick, un biólogo, acaba ancorando despois dun naufraxio nunha illa, onde o doutor Moreau fai experimentos sinistros que provocan criaturas estrañas, medio humanas medio animais. Os humanimais, elaborados a medida do seu creador, Moreau, acabaran comportandose dun modo inesperado. Eis unha novela contemporanea para un tema actual, como o e a relacion da etica e a xenetica, narrada por un escritor utopico.
The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naive locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag - only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear.
At a dinner party in suburban London, the Time Traveller, known to the reader only as the Eminent Scientist, speaks to his guests about the fourth dimension of space--i.e. time. He states that it is possible to travel through time much as one travels through space. The guests are not persuaded, even after seeing the Eminent Scientist's time machine itself. At a later dinner party, the scientist arrives a little late, rumpled and dirty. He tells them he has spent the equivalent of eight days in the year 802,701. He encountered the Eloi, a race of delicate gentle vegetarians who exist in an idyllic garden, and the Morlocks, who live underground and operate the machinery and industrial equipment of the world. The Eloi, in other words are descendents of capitalism, and the Morlocks are the progeny of the proletariat. The Time Traveller then hurries into the year 30,000,000, where he sees a single life form--a round, tentacled thing near the ocean. He concludes that this represents the end of life on earth.
Prendrick, a survivor of a shipwreck, is picked up by a schooner bound for Noble''s Isle. On the island, Prendrick encounters the Beast People, roughly human but with animalistic traits. It turns out that Dr. Moreau, a scientist who came to the island years before, has been developing animals into humans with the help of his assistant Montgomery. When Moreau is killed, the Beast People revert and their world becomes utterly chaotic. Prendrick, while imagining himself to remain a cut above the Beast People, becomes somewhat bestial himself. He is rescued from the island, but cannot shake off the perverse vision of the Beast People as he continues his life among men.
England has been invaded by aliens from Mars. The tale begins with an explosion on the surface of Mars. Then a meteor is spotted coming toward the Earth. The Martians are winning the attack until Earthly disease thwarts their plans. Several movies have been made from this classic alien invasion novel.
Adrift in a dinghy, Edward Prendick, the single survivor from the good ship Lady Vain, is rescued by a vessel carrying a profoundly unusual cargo - a menagerie of savage animals. Tended to recovery by their keeper Montgomery, who gives him dark medicine that tastes of blood, Prendick soon finds himself stranded upon an uncharted island in the Pacific with his rescuer and the beasts. Here, he meets Montgomery's master, the sinister Dr. Moreau - a brilliant scientist whose notorious experiments in vivisection have caused him to abandon the civilised world. It soon becomes clear he has been developing these experiments - with truly horrific results.
A gripping and entertaining tale of terror and suspense as well as a potent Faustian allegory of hubris and science run amok, The Invisible Man endures as one of the signature stories in the literature of science fiction. A brilliant scientist uncovers the secret to invisibility, but his grandiose dreams and the power he unleashes cause him to spiral into intrigue, madness, and murder. The inspiration for countless imitations and film adaptations, The Invisible Man is as remarkable and relevant today as it was a hundred years ago. As Arthur C. Clarke points out in his Introduction, The interest of the story . . . lies not in its scientific concepts, but in the brilliantly worked out development of the theme of invisibility. If one could be invisible, then what? I personally consider the greatest of English living writers [to be] H. G. Wells. Upton Sinclair
A mysterious individual with a white face boards the train to London. At first he does not seem to be interested in what is happening in his carriage, but suddenly, attracted by a book a passenger is reading, he starts telling about a strange series of dreams that had and have changed his life forever.
