On This Day: H. G. Wells

Thanks to the time-travelling wonder of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction‘s miraculous On This Day function (much praised in these parts on many an occasion), we can see that the father of Science Fiction, the great Herbert George Wells, died on this day in 1946.

We are delighted to publish a number of his fine works in SF Masterworks hardbacks:

and cloth-bound omnibus editions of great beauty:

It is simply impossible to overstate Wells’s importance to the SF field. To quote The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Wells was:

the most important of all nineteenth-century sf writers in English, both in the UK and in America, where his early sf was also widely published from 1895 on. His sf was also important later in the evolution of Genre SF in America, through the purchase in the 1920s of several of these early novels and tales by Hugo Gernsback for republication in Amazing and elsewhere. Throughout his UK career, until at least 1940, he remained central to the evolution of the Scientific Romance, his influence on J D Beresford, S Fowler Wright, Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C Clarke and later authors being unmistakable.

Happy 149th birthday, Mr Wells!