H G Wells Omnibus, page 462
Karenin looked blinking at the last quivering rim of incandescence, and shaded his eyes and became silent.
Presently he gave a little start.
‘What?’ asked Rachel Borken.
‘I had forgotten,’ he said.
‘What had you forgotten?’
‘I had forgotten about the operation to-morrow. I have been so interested as Man to-day that I have nearly forgotten Marcus Karenin. Marcus Karenin must go under your knife to-morrow, Fowler, and very probably Marcus Karenin will die.’ He raised his slightly shrivelled hand. ‘It does not matter, Fowler. It scarcely matters even to me. For indeed is it Karenin who has been sitting here and talking; is it not rather a common mind, Fowler, that has played about between us? You and I and all of us have added thought to thought, but the thread is neither you nor me. What is true we all have; when the individual has altogether brought himself to the test and winnowing of expression, then the individual is done. I feel as though I had already been emptied out of that little vessel, that Marcus Karenin, which in my youth held me so tightly and completely. Your beauty, dear Edith, and your broad brow, dear Rachel, and you, Fowler, with your firm and skilful hands, are now almost as much to me as this hand that beats the arm of my chair. And as little me. And the spirit that desires to know, the spirit that resolves to do, that spirit that lives and has talked in us to-day, lived in Athens, lived in Florence, lives on, I know, for ever… .
‘And you, old Sun, with your sword of flame searing these poor eyes of Marcus for the last time of all, beware of me! You think I die—and indeed I am only taking off one more coat to get at you. I have threatened you for ten thousand years, and soon I warn you I shall be coming. When I am altogether stripped and my disguises thrown away. Very soon now, old Sun, I shall launch myself at you, and I shall reach you and I shall put my foot on your spotted face and tug you about by your fiery locks. One step I shall take to the moon, and then I shall leap at you. I’ve talked to you before, old Sun, I’ve talked to you a million times, and now I am beginning to remember. Yes—long ago, long ago, before I had stripped off a few thousand generations, dust now and forgotten, I was a hairy savage and I pointed my hand at you and—clearly I remember it!—I saw you in a net. Have you forgotten that, old Sun? …
‘Old Sun, I gather myself together out of the pools of the individual that have held me dispersed so long. I gather my billion thoughts into science and my million wills into a common purpose. Well may you slink down behind the mountains from me, well may you cower… .’
9.
‘These questions are the next questions to which research will bring us answers,’ said Karenin. ‘While we sit here and talk idly and inexactly of what is needed and what may be, there are hundreds of keen-witted men and women who are working these things out, dispassionately and certainly, for the love of knowledge. The next sciences to yield great harvests now will be psychology and neural physiology. These perplexities of the situation between man and woman and the trouble with the obstinacy of egotism, these are temporary troubles, the issue of our own times. Suddenly all these differences that seem so fixed will dissolve, all these incompatibles will run together, and we shall go on to mould our bodies and our bodily feelings and personal reactions as boldly as we begin now to carve mountains and set the seas in their places and change the currents of the wind.’
‘It is the next wave,’ said Fowler, who had come out upon the terrace and seated himself silently behind Karenin’s chair.
‘Of course, in the old days,’ said Edwards, ‘men were tied to their city or their country, tied to the homes they owned or the work they did… .’
‘I do not see,’ said Karenin, ‘that there is any final limit to man’s power of self-modification.
‘There is none,’ said Fowler, walking forward and sitting down upon the parapet in front of Karenin so that he could see his face. ‘There is no absolute limit to either knowledge or power… . I hope you do not tire yourself talking.’
‘I am interested,’ said Karenin. ‘I suppose in a little while men will cease to be tired. I suppose in a little time you will give us something that will hurry away the fatigue products and restore our jaded tissues almost at once. This old machine may be made to run without slacking or cessation.’
‘That is possible, Karenin. But there is much to learn.’
‘And all the hours we give to digestion and half living; don’t you think there will be some way of saving these?’
Fowler nodded assent.
‘And then sleep again. When man with his blazing lights made an end to night in his towns and houses—it is only a hundred years or so ago that that was done—then it followed he would presently resent his eight hours of uselessness. Shan’t we presently take a tabloid or lie in some field of force that will enable us to do with an hour or so of slumber and rise refreshed again?’
‘Frobisher and Ameer Ali have done work in that direction.’
‘And then the inconveniences of age and those diseases of the system that come with years; steadily you drive them back and you lengthen and lengthen the years that stretch between the passionate tumults of youth and the contractions of senility. Man who used to weaken and die as his teeth decayed now looks forward to a continually lengthening, continually fuller term of years. And all those parts of him that once gathered evil against him, the vestigial structures and odd, treacherous corners of his body, you know better and better how to deal with. You carve his body about and leave it re-modelled and unscarred. The psychologists are learning how to mould minds, to reduce and remove bad complexes of thought and motive, to relieve pressures and broaden ideas. So that we are becoming more and more capable of transmitting what we have learnt and preserving it for the race. The race, the racial wisdom, science, gather power continually to subdue the individual man to its own end. Is that not so?’
Fowler said that it was, and for a time he was telling Karenin of new work that was in progress in India and Russia. ‘And how is it with heredity?’ asked Karenin.
Fowler told them of the mass of inquiry accumulated and arranged by the genius of Tchen, who was beginning to define clearly the laws of inheritance and how the sex of children and the complexions and many of the parental qualities could be determined.
‘He can actually DO——?’
‘It is still, so to speak, a mere laboratory triumph,’ said Fowler, ‘but to-morrow it will be practicable.’
‘You see,’ cried Karenin, turning a laughing face to Rachel and Edith, ‘while we have been theorising about men and women, here is science getting the power for us to end that old dispute for ever. If woman is too much for us, we’ll reduce her to a minority, and if we do not like any type of men and women, we’ll have no more of it. These old bodies, these old animal limitations, all this earthly inheritance of gross inevitabilities falls from the spirit of man like the shrivelled cocoon from an imago. And for my own part, when I hear of these things I feel like that—like a wet, crawling new moth that still fears to spread its wings. Because where do these things take us?’
‘Beyond humanity,’ said Kahn.
‘No,’ said Karenin. ‘We can still keep our feet upon the earth that made us. But the air no longer imprisons us, this round planet is no longer chained to us like the ball of a galley slave… .
‘In a little while men who will know how to bear the strange gravitations, the altered pressures, the attenuated, unfamiliar gases and all the fearful strangenesses of space will be venturing out from this earth. This ball will be no longer enough for us; our spirit will reach out… . Cannot you see how that little argosy will go glittering up into the sky, twinkling and glittering smaller and smaller until the blue swallows it up. They may succeed out there; they may perish, but other men will follow them… .
‘It is as if a great window opened,’ said Karenin.
10.
Karenin desired that he might dream alone for a little while before he returned to the cell in which he was to sleep. He was given relief for a pain that began to trouble him and wrapped warmly about with furs, for a great coldness was creeping over all things, and so they left him, and he sat for a long time watching the afterglow give place to the darkness of night.
It seemed to those who had to watch over him unobtrusively lest he should be in want of any attention, that he mused very deeply.
The white and purple peaks against the golden sky sank down into cold, blue remoteness, glowed out again and faded again, and the burning cressets of the Indian stars, that even the moonrise cannot altogether quench, began their vigil. The moon rose behind the towering screen of dark precipices to the east, and long before it emerged above these, its slanting beams had filled the deep gorges below with luminous mist and turned the towers and pinnacles of Lio Porgyul to a magic dreamcastle of radiance and wonder… .
Came a great uprush of ghostly light above the black rim of rocks, and then like a bubble that is blown and detaches itself the moon floated off clear into the unfathomable dark sky… .
And then Karenin stood up. He walked a few paces along the terrace and remained for a time gazing up at that great silver disc, that silvery shield that must needs be man’s first conquest in outer space… .
Presently he turned about and stood with his hands folded behind him, looking at the northward stars… .
At length he went to his own cell. He lay down there and slept peacefully till the morning. And early in the morning they came to him and the anaesthetic was given him and the operation performed.
It was altogether successful, but Karenin was weak and he had to lie very still; and about seven days later a blood clot detached itself from the healing scar and travelled to his heart, and he died in an instant in the night.
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Renaissance
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Copyright ©2005 G. W. Thomas
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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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BEST HORROR TALES OF OF H. G. WELLS
26 Terrifying Novellas, Novelettes & Short Stories
By
H. G. WELLS
Edited by
G. W. THOMAS
A Renaissance E Books publication
ISBN 1-58873-616-4
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2005 G. W. Thomas
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
For information:
Email publisher@renebooks.com
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: THE MONSTER GENRE
AEPYORNIS ISLAND
THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID
IN THE AVU OBSERVATORY
THE SEA-RAIDERS
THE PLATTNER STORY
IN THE ABYSS
THE CRYSTAL EGG
THE STOLEN BODY
THE STORY OF THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST
THE VALLEY OF THE SPIDERS
THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTS
THE STOLEN BACILLUS
THE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAY
THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON’S EYES
LORD OF THE DYNAMOS
A MOTH-GENUS NOVO
THE TREASURE IN THE FOREST
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON
THE CONE
THE STORY OF THE LATE MR. ELVESHAM
UNDER THE KNIFE
THE TRUTH ABOUT PYECRAFT
THE MAGIC SHOP
THE DOOR IN THE WALL
THE RED ROOM
INTRODUCTION
H. G. WELLS, MONSTER MAKER
I had an illuminating experience recently, one that allowed me to see more clearly myself as a writer. A good friend of mine sent me a copy of his new book that contains an award-winning novella and its sequel. The book is Survivor by J. F. Gonzalez. So let me say right here: J. F. Gonzalez is ten times the writer I’ll ever be. None of this is meant as criticism of this fine horror author.
Survivor is a scary book. Which is good because it’s horror and if it wasn’t scary you’d feel ripped off. JFG scared me more times than I like to admit, and worse, I still have stray thoughts every so often about the book, so the fear is still there. Why? Because everything in Survivor is possible. It’s horror based on reality. It is possible to be kidnapped. More easily than we think. It is possible to have our loved ones tortured and mutilated for the pleasure of sick individuals. That’s a grim reality.
So, here’s where the illumination comes in. I had to compare my body of horror work against Mr. Gonzalez’s masterwork. I’ve never written anything that scary. I hope I never do. I’m a monster writer, not a horror writer. I have always been one. I’ll always be one. When I watched the old Kolchak: The Nightstalker reruns it was the monster I waited for. And now, if you read my stuff, I can only hope you are having the same fun and anticipation.
Could I construct a horror tale with the terrible realities of modern life? Perhaps. Would I? I think not. Perhaps this is a symptom of writers who pen both horror and fantasy—it’s all about the monsters. I can’t recommend Mr. Gonzalez’s novel enough to fans of The Silence of the Lambs. Or the novels of Michael Slade. Buy Survivor. Enjoy it with my blessing. But I need monsters. I don’t have what it takes to stare the stark reality in the eye. I need symbolism. I need a foil, a shill to represent all those terrible things. The vampire to represent disease. Frankenstein’s Adam to represents the new soul entering a harsh world. The werewolf who might be the child worrying about the changes in puberty or the adult as he slips into old age. Monsters can explore any theme or motif.
I must follow in the footsteps of the greatest monster maker. But who is the greatest? Bram Stoker? No, he only created one, Dracula. Edgar Allan Poe then? No, he wrote great stories but created very few monsters. Le Fanu? Blackwood? William Hope Hodgson? No, it’s H. G. Wells. But you’re saying, “Wells is that Science Fiction guy.” Yes, he was, but he was also the Monster Master.
H. G. Wells’ importance as a Science Fiction writer, as a Socialist and as a predictor of technological changes is well known. He was one of the first writers to make Science and scientists the central characters in stories. His Socialist beliefs underlie all his work. His political views provide his themes: the Eloi and Morlocks are the class struggle drawn in the extreme, the Invisible Man is killed by a group of common men working together to stop a mad scientist/overlord, even the terrible Martians fall to the smallest, least significant thing on the planet, microbes. It is well known that Wells predicted tank warfare, aerial bombing and bacteriological terrorism. That are all true—it’s there in his work—but so are the monsters.
