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作家简介:
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English author, best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary. Together with Jules Verne, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".
Wells was an outspoken socialist and sympathetic to pacifist views, although he supported the First World War once it was under way, and his later works became increasingly political and didactic. His middle period novels (1900–1920) were less science-fictional; they covered lower-middle class life (The History of Mr Polly) and the 'New Woman' and the Suffragettes (Ann Veronica).
Biography
Early life
Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House, 47 High Street, Bromley, in the county of Kent, on 21 September 1866.[1] Called "Bertie" in the family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells (a former domestic gardener, and at the time a shopkeeper and amateur cricketer) and his wife Sarah Neal (a former domestic servant). The family was of the impoverished lower middle class. An inheritance had allowed them to purchase a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it was never prosperous: the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. They managed to earn a meagre income, but little of it came from the shop; Joseph received an unsteady amount of money from playing professional cricket for the Kent county team. Payment for skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary donations afterwards, or from small payments from the clubs where matches were played.
A defining incident of young Wells's life was an accident he had in 1874, which left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he started reading books from the local library, brought to him by his father. He soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access; they also stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he entered Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy, a private school founded in 1849 following the bankruptcy of Morley's earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, on producing copperplate handwriting and doing the sort of sums useful to tradesmen. Wells continued at Morley's Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh. The accident effectively put an end to Joseph's career as a cricketer, and his earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss.
No longer able to support themselves financially, the family instead sought to place their boys as apprentices to various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium: Hyde's. His experiences were later used as inspiration for his novels The Wheels of Chance and Kipps, which describe the life of a draper's apprentice as well as being critiques of the world's distribution of wealth.
Wells's mother and father had never got along with one another particularly well (she was a Protestant, he a freethinker), and when she went back to work as a lady's maid (at Uppark, a country house in Sussex) one of the conditions of work was that she would not have space for her husband or children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives, though they never divorced and neither ever developed any other liaison. As for Wells, he not only failed at being a draper, he also failed as a chemist's assistant, and after each failure, he would arrive at Uppark — "the bad shilling back again!" as he said — and stay there until a fresh start could be arranged for him. Fortunately for Wells, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself, reading many classic works, including Plato's Republic, and More's Utopia.
赫伯特·乔治·威尔斯,H·G·威尔斯(Herbert George Wells,1866年9月21日-1946年8月13日),英国著名小说家,新闻记者、政治家、社会学家和历史学家。他创作的科幻小说对该领域影响深远,如“时间旅行”、“外星人”、“反乌托邦”等都是20世纪科幻小说中的主流话题。
早年生活
威尔斯1866年出生于肯特郡的布朗利(Bromley)一个贫寒的家庭。父母都做过仆人。父亲约瑟夫曾经是职业板球运动员,后来经营一家五金店铺。母亲尼尔则一直给有钱人家做仆人。
1880年,由于父亲的店铺倒闭,威尔斯只好辍学到温泽的一家布店做学徒。但是他在这里的工作没有得到店主的满意,1个月以后他就不得不离开,到萨墨塞特郡当了很短一段时间的小学教师。后来还在苏塞克斯郡的一个小镇上给一个药剂师当助手。1881年4月,他又来到朴次茅斯的一个布店作了两年学徒。令人无法忍受的学徒生活迫使他最终离去,在苏塞克斯郡的一家文法学校得到一个助教职位。
1884年他得到助学金(每星期一个基尼),进入了英国皇家科学院的前身堪津顿科学师范学校。他在这里学习物理学、化学、地质学、天文学和生物学。其中他的生物学老师是著名的进化论科学家托马斯·赫胥黎(Thomas Henry Huxley),他后来的科幻小说写作受赫胥黎的进化论思想影响很大。1890年他以动物学的优异成绩获得了伦敦大学帝国理工学院的理学学士学位。从1891年到1893年在伦敦大学函授学院教授生物学。
创作生涯
Bantam经典版《时间机器》封面从1891年开始,威尔斯为一些报刊撰写文章。1893年患上了肺出血,休养期间,开始写作短篇小说、散文和评论,同时也开始了科普创作,例如《百万年的人》(The Man of the Year Million)中他大胆设想在自然选择影响下未来人类的形象,巨大的眼睛,细长的手。
随后《全国观察家》发表了威尔斯关于时间旅行的设想的连载文章,后来在1895年把这些文章改为《時間機器》(The Time Machine)的小说发行。此书的出版引起轰动,也奠定了他作为科幻小说作家的声誉。
此后,他又陆续发表了《莫洛博士岛》(The Island of Dr. Moreau)、《隐身人》(The Invisible Man)、《世界大战》(The War of the Worlds)、《神的食物》等科幻小说,还写了大量的论文和长篇小说。
20世纪以后,除了科幻小说以外,威尔斯还从幽默小说《爱情和鲁雅轩》开始,创作了一系列以《托诺-邦盖》为代表的反映英国中下层社会的写实小说,但是知名度不如科幻小说。
社会活动
少年时学徒的经历,使威尔斯形成了一种批判资本主义社会的意识,并且始终贯穿着他的一生。
他接受了空想社会主义的思想,他自称“从学生时代起就是一个社会主义者”。他的科幻小说创作,也是他试图通过教育和科学技术改造社会的一种尝试和努力。但是他并不信仰马克思主义,而是热衷于改良主义,他称自己是一个“保守的社会主义者”。他不赞成阶级斗争和暴力革命,但是认为有必要消灭资本主义社会里无**状态。
1903年,威尔斯成为标榜改良主义的社会主义团体费边社社员。对于费边社温和的、改良主义的社会主义思想他仍然认为过于激进。而他对年轻成员的影响和个人领袖欲的膨胀,使他和费边社的领导成员肖伯纳等发生不合,最后退出了这个组织。他的长篇小说《安·维尼罗卡》(Ann Veronica)和《新马基雅弗利》(The New Machiavelli)反映的就是他在这段时期的生活经验。
第一次世界大战后,他用了1年时间完成了100多万字的《世界史纲》(The Outline of History),这本著作展现了他作为历史学家的一面。
威尔斯还在1920年和1934年访问苏联,受到了列宁和斯大林的接见。他虽然不大理解苏联的社会主义制度,但是仍然作了比较真实的报道。这在当时是很少见的。
晚年
1920年代以后,威尔斯转向政论性小说创作,借科幻小说的形式,来宣传他的改革理想,但整体上被认为缺乏艺术特色。
1946年威尔斯在伦敦去世。他晚年的作品转向了灵魂、宗教、道德等一面
作品风格
威尔斯善于把科学知识通俗化,并通过小说将其突出出来,正是这种才能使他的科幻小说深受读者欢迎。
他的科幻小说常常具有讽刺性,而显现威尔斯一贯的对资本主义的批判意识,而且这也成为了威尔斯独特的写作风格。
威尔斯的科幻小说以軟科幻为主,主要描写各种先进的科学技术对未来世界的影响,以及这些科学技术所带来的社会问题,政治冲突也就成为了他的小说中的一个重要方面。他的作品也展现了未来科技发展的各种可能性,在他的作品中科技不仅给人类带来了便利,也同时产生反作用,他认为科学并不一定是人类的伙伴。在他的作品中充满了科学技术给人类带来的威胁:外星人入侵,社会**、战争、人种变异、太阳消亡。
威尔斯的创作方法对当时及后世英国和世界科学幻想小说的发展有重要影响。他的《当睡者醒来时》开创了科幻小说中重要的一支血脉:“反乌托邦”小说。后来俄罗斯(苏联)作家扎米亚京的《我们》、英国赫胥黎的《美丽新世界》,还有乔治·奥威尔的《一九八四》都继承了这一传统。他在许多小说中对“大脑袋”的外星人的描述成了科幻小说中历来对外星人的“标准形象”。
他的科幻小说也遭到了一些科幻小说家的批评,他们认为应该把更多的信念放在人类的灵魂和精神之上。
合集目录:
01Ann Veronica, a modern love story (English) (as Author)
02Anticipations Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human life and Thought (English) (as Author)
03Certain Personal Matters (English) (as Author)
04The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories (English) (as Author)
05The Door in the Wall and Other Stories (English) (as Author)
06An Englishman Looks at the World (English) (as Author)
07First and Last Things (English) (as Author)
08The First Men in the Moon (English) (as Author)
09The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (English) (as Author)
10God the Invisible King (English) (as Author)
11The History of Mr. Polly (English) (as Author)
12In the Days of the Comet (English) (as Author)
13In the Fourth Year Anticipations of a World Peace (English) (as Author)
14The Invisible Man (English) (as Author)
15The Island of Doctor Moreau (English) (as Author)
16Love and Mr. Lewisham (English) (as Author)
17Mankind in the Making (English) (as Author)
18A Modern Utopia (English) (as Author)
19Mr. Britling Sees It Through (English) (as Author)
20The New Machiavelli (English) (as Author)
21New Worlds For Old A Plain Account of Modern Socialism (English) (as Author)
22The Passionate Friends (English) (as Author)
23The Sleeper Awakes A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes (English) (as Author)
24The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents (English) (as Author)
25Tales of Space and Time (English) (as Author)
26Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata (English) (as Author)
27The Time Machine (English) (as Author)
28Tono Bungay (English) (as Author)
29Twelve Stories and a Dream (English) (as Author)
30War and the future: Italy, France and Britain at war (English) (as Author)
31The War in the Air (English) (as Author)
32The War of the Worlds (English) (as Author)
33What is Coming? (English) (as Author)
34The Wheels of Chance (English) (as Author)
35When the Sleeper Wakes (English) (as Author)
36The World Set Free (English) (as Author)
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