Catching Up with Wells: The Political Theory of H. G. Wells’s Science Fiction

• Published in: Political theory 2017-10, Vol.45 (5), p.637-658
• Main Author: Planinc, Emma
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Catching; Fiction; Human rights; Humans; Identity; Literary criticism; Moral education; Nonfiction; Political philosophy; Science fiction & fantasy; Wells, H G (1866-1946); Writers
• ISSN: 0090-5917; 1552-7476
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591716642496

H. G. Wells’s The Rights of Man (1940)—which provided the groundwork for the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights—has been re-released with a new Introduction by novelist Ali Smith, who reminds us of Wells’s political prophetic call for “a real federation of mankind,” and of the fact that we have still failed to meet the future he envisioned. If we are to catch up with Wells, we must, however, examine the foundations of Wells’s “cosmopolitan” vision, which requires examining both his scientific non-fiction and his scientific romances. Looking to Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau in particular, and the influence of Wells’s early scientific essays on Moreau’s narrative, we get a picture of Wells as a writer and a man who is anxious about the identity and future of the human species, but who nevertheless puts his faith in the “apparatuses” of “education and moral suggestion,” which are held together by “common faith.” Much like Charles Taylor and Simon Critchley, Wells calls for more than a political reconstitution, or institution, of right: he calls for a new cosmic imaginary, or supreme fiction, that has the potential to redeem and preserve the human species.