Short Fiction

H. G. Wells

Short Fiction — H. G. Wells is probably best known for his imaginative longer works, such as his novels The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man; but he was also a prolific short story writer. This Standard Ebooks edition of his short fiction includes fifty-six of Wells’ stories, including works from the collections The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents (1895), The Plattner Story and Others (1897), Tales of Space and Time (1899), Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1911). The collection also includes “The Pearl of Love,” written in 1925. The stories are presented here in approximate order of first publication. The stories vary wildly in genre and theme, ranging from tales of domestic romance, to ghost stories and tropical adventures, to far-future science fiction. Interestingly, many of the stories deal with the exciting but also frightening prospect of heavier-than-air flight and aerial warfare, and it is worth noting that some of these stories were written years before the Wright brothers first took to the air.