The Holy Terror: H.G. Wells

[poliphilo]

If you set your book in the immediate future you're willing it a short life- and if the date of publication is 1939 and you're talking about a universe of the 1940s in which there's no second world war and an (offstage) Hitler retires with honour to his hunting lodge and your anti-hero uses Oswald Mosley's brown shirts (lightly disguised) as a stepping stone to world domination then its vogue is going to be very short indeed.

A pity, really, because The Holy Terror (for all that Wells is writing on auto-pilot for much of the time) is a convincing portrait of a fictional man of genius (in this case a politician) and such things are extraordinarily rare. 

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I'm sitting here trying to imagine why Hitler would have retired honorably. Also, I had never heard of Oswald Mosley, before.

Wells seems a fascinating author. Reading your delightful thumbnail reviews, I can easily see why Mencken devoted so much ink to the man's literary autopsy.