In a message dated 3/5/00 12:13:51 AM Central Standard Time, max@maxmore.com
writes:
> Don: I also find that scene deeply stirring. You might be interested to
> know that you can find the dialogue you quoted at the back of the very
> first issue of Extropy magazine (the paper edition in 1998).
A slip of the finger there, Max. The first issue of Extropy Magazine was
published in 1988 - by you and Tom.
> The problem with Wells was that he seemed to be a bit of a technocrat--in
> the sense that he thought a scientific elite should run things for the
> citizens. It's been a long time since I read any Wells, so maybe I'm being
> unfair to him (someone please correct me if so). He seems quite extropian
> expect in that my impression was that he looked down on the masses (the
> lumpen-proletariat as the Leninists would say) as incapable of creating
> their own future. Aside from that, he gave a powerful message of humanist
> and technological optimism.
You're being too fair by far to Wells regarding his politics, I'm afraid.
Wells was one of the founders, and because of his popularity as a writer, one
of the most well-known members of the Fabian Society:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~lisjpo/fabian.htm
As the condensed little essay cited above chronicles, the Fabians were a
group of very influential, but very explicit socialists in England. I find
reading Wells' political writings excruciating, as they were exactly the kind
of misguided technocratic commandism that seduced most of the best minds of
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and which led so tragically to the
enslavement and organized murder of hundreds of millions of people. To me,
his political writings are like spent ordinance lying on a bloody battlefield.
Of course I didn't know any of this when I read "The Time Machine" and "War
of the Worlds" as a kid. A couple of years ago I was driving through the
coastal area south of London and passed through the little town of Tunbridge
Wells. The hair on the back of my head (some of the little still *in situ*)
stood on end, as I recalled that this was the setting of the arrival of the
first Martian invaders in "War of the Worlds". (The same thing happened
about ten years earlier when I drove through Grover's Mill, New Jersey - the
place that the other Welles set the same event in his radio broadcaast based
on the book . . .)
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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