科幻小说之父

作為科幻小说的开山鼻祖之一，威尔斯对未来的许多奇想，在今天都已经成为现实。

Any Americans who switched on their radios at eight oclock in the evening of 30th October 1938， would have heard a weather forecast followed by live music broadcast from the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza， New York. Then something happened which changed everything...

An announcer broke in to report that， “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Concerned listeners were told that a large meteor had crashed into a farmers field in Grovers Mills， New Jersey. A reporter was then heard at the site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder， “Good heavens，” he declared...

The reporter continued his grizzly description until he reported that Martians were mounting walking war machines and firing “heat-ray” weapons. Listeners could hear the devastation—the sound of the heat rays， the screams and the explosions. That night， nearly one million American radio listeners actually believed that a real Martian invasion was underway. Panic broke out across the country. In New Jersey， terrified civilians jammed highways seeking to escape the alien marauders.

It was all a hoax of course， and the director， actor and producer of the radio play broadcast at 8 pm—Orson Welles—got into trouble for the brilliant but reckless way he adapted the classic H.G.Wells novel， The War Of The Worlds. Even though the story was over thirty years back then， it still had the ability to speak to the darkest fears inside the human psyche. It amazed and shocked many ordinary Americans， and sent much of the country into a blind panic.

English-born Herbert George Wells remains one of the greatest science fiction writers of the English language. His books became so successful that many were turned into successful films. In The Invisible Man a scientist turns himself invisible but struggles to turn himself back again. In The Island of Dr. Moreau a ship-wrecked man discovers the ghastly and horrific experiments done by an evil doctor， as he wanders around the island.

The First Men in the Moon tells of two men landing there who discover an alien race living there. In The Time Machine an English scientist invents a time machine travelling from the Victorian period to into the far future， discovering strange sentient races as he progresses. Many of these themes sound familiar to sci-fi fans now—not because he copied them， but because he invented them and everyone else subsequently took and developed his ideas.

Wells was an enormously confident man. He was very creative and always seemed to researching for his next new idea or dreaming up a possible future technology. Fascinatingly， he was often right， for example， he predicted the atomic power and antigravity-substances to allow machines to escape the earths gravity. Written in 1896， The Island of Dr. Moreau features now familiar ideas， such as genetic engineering， blood transfusions and advanced surgical techniques. His 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come saw a wireless wrist intercom that had many smart phone like features.

Before that in 1923s Men Like Gods， he imagined a utopian future in which people communicated almost entirely by wireless telephones and voice mail. In the late 1930s， he proposed something he called the “World Brain”， an enormous bank of human knowledge stored on microfilm and transported free to users by aeroplane—this needed only the invention of the microchip to resemble the internet. He even thought of the automatic sliding door， which appeared in 1899s When The Sleeper Awakes， more than a half-century before it was invented.

H.G.Wells published hundreds of books and pamphlets of many different kinds—from novels and short stories to social commentary， reportage， travel writing and world history. An intellectual powerhouse with a genius for telling stories， any science fiction fan should seek out his work.

1938年10月30日晚八点，许多美国人打开收音机，准备收听来自纽约公园广场酒店“经线直播间”的天气预报，以及随后的现场音乐广播。然而，随后的事改变了一切……

播音员紧急插播一条新闻，说“詹宁斯山天文台的法雷尔教授”检测到火星发生了爆炸。此时听众们开始有些担心了。他们被告知，一颗巨大的流星撞到了新泽西州格鲁米尔斯某农民的田地里。随后，听众能听到记者在现场描述有“火星人”从一个大金属圆筒中冒出——“天哪！”这位记者惊呼道……

这位记者继续着他恐怖的描述，说火星人装了步行战斗器械，并开始用“热光”武器扫射。听众可以听到扫射的声音——激光发射声、尖叫声，还有爆炸声。当晚，近百万的美国听众对“火星人入侵”信以为真，恐慌席卷了全国。在新泽西州，惊恐的民众因为要逃离外星劫掠者，堵塞了高速公路。

当然，这完全是一个恶作剧，晚八点广播剧的导演、演员兼制片人奥逊·威尔斯天才却鲁莽地改编了威尔斯的经典小说——《星际战争》，给自己惹来了不少麻烦。尽管当时威尔斯的《星际战争》已经出版了三十年，但此作品仍能同人类灵魂中最黑暗的担忧产生共鸣。这个故事如此震惊，吓坏了许多普普通通的美国人，还使美国大部分地区陷入了盲目恐慌。

出生于英国的赫伯特·乔治·威尔斯至今仍是英语世界中最伟大的科幻作家之一。他写的作品受到广泛好评，许多被拍成电影后仍大获成功。《隐形人》讲述了一个科学家将自己隐形后却无法恢复原形。在《莫洛博士岛》中，失事船只上唯一的生还者在孤岛上漫步，却意外发现了一名邪恶的医生的恐怖实验。

《月球上最早的人类》讲述的是两个登月的人在月球上发现了外星生物。《时间机器》则是说一位英国科学家发明了一台时间机器，并从维多利亚时代穿越到遥远的未来，沿途发现了各种奇怪的智能生物。这些主题对现代科幻迷来说都再熟悉不过了——但这可不是因为威尔斯无新意——正是因为威尔斯发明了这些概念，后来人才开始借用并发展了他的科幻概念！

威尔斯是一个极其自信的人。他极富创造力，似乎总在不断地寻找下一个新的想法，或是梦想出一个未来可能的技术。有趣的是，他的想法经常被事实证实。例如，他預测了原子能，以及能让机器摆脱地球引力的反重力物质。写于1896年的《莫洛博士岛》主要描述了现在大家熟悉的很多概念，如：基因工程、输血和先进的手术技术。在他1933年的小说《未来世界》中，我们就已经领略了有着智能手机功能的无线手表对讲机。

在此之前，1923年的《神一样的人》中，他想象了一个乌托邦式的未来，人们几乎完全凭借无线电话和语音邮件沟通。在20世纪30年代末期，他提出了“世界大脑”的概念：说的是将一个巨大的人类知识的宝库储存在微缩胶卷中，通过飞行器免费提供给用户使用——此概念只需微芯片的发明，便可完全描述当今的互联网。他甚至早在1899年的《眠者醒来》中，就提出了自动门的概念，这比其最终发明早了半个多世纪。

威尔斯发表的图书和小册子多达数百本——从小说到短篇故事、从社会评论到报告文学、从游记到世界历史，应有尽有。他不仅是知识分子中的大咖，还是讲故事的天才，所有科幻迷都应该找他的作品拜读。