H. G. Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) is famously often referred to as 'the father of science fiction' but Wellss phenomenal imagination ranged far and wide and included works of comic social realism. This compendium of his stories contains two of his most well-known works in the genre, The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1897). In addition, the reader is treated
to some stories of truly extraordinary dimensions: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), When the Sleeper Wakes (1899), The First Men in the Moon (1901) and The Food of the Gods and How it came to Earth (1904). But Wellss phenomenal imagination ranged far and wide and thus we have included here two works of comic social realism, Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr. Polly (1910), stories that resound with Edwardian dreams, frustrations and triumphs. Such is Wells's facility with story-telling that well over a century after their publication his stories are as fresh and compelling to us today as they would have been when his initial readers first turned their pages, often in astonishment and frequently in amusement.
