H. G. Wells was born Herbert George in Bromley, Kent, England, on
September 21, 1866. His father was a professional cricketer and
sometimes shopkeeper, his mother a former lady's maid. Although
"Bertie" left school at fourteen to become a draper's apprentice (a
life he detested), he later won a scholarship to the Normal School
of Science in London, where he studied with the famous Thomas Henry
Huxley. He began to sell articles and short stories regularly in
1893. In 1895, his immediately successful novel rescued him from a
life of penury on a schoolteacher's salary. His other "scientific
romances"-The Island of Dr. Moreau(1896),The Invisible
Man(1897),The War of the Worlds(1898),The First Men in the
Moon(1901), andThe War in the Air(1908)-won him the distinction as
the father of science fiction. Henry James saw in Wells the most
gifted writer of the age, but Wells, having coined the phrase "the
war that will end war" to describe World War I, became increasingly
disillusioned and focused his attention on educating mankind with
his bestsellingOutline of History(1920) and his later utopian
works. Living until 1946, Wells witnessed a world more terrible
than any of his imaginative visions, and he bitterly observed-
"Reality has taken a leaf from my book and set itself to supercede
me."
Ursula K. Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California, in 1929. She is
the bestselling author of the Earthsea Cycle and the Hainish Cycle,
includingThe Left Hand of Darkness. With the awarding of the 1975
Hugo and Nebula Awards to The Dispossessed, she became the first
author to win both awards twice for novels. LeGuin lives in
Portland, Oregon.
“Everything one imagines in the way of genius and fun.”—Rebecca West
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