Silly pretty Eloi holding hands

[susie_flo]

Argh!  Why does my skin hate me this week?  It can't decide whether it wants me to be 14 or 40, and has somehow combined the worst of both.  Meanwhile my 40-year-old colleague swans around with a visage of pure, porcelain, unlined perfection.  Hmph.

Despite these setbacks, I have been feeling randomly cheerful all week.  My inner curmudgeon is uncharacteristically quiet, though I am all a dither on too much caffeine and unable to settle down for more than 5 mins...   can't even manage a bit of mindless LJ wittering. 

This week, G has started to drag me out of bed early in the morning for a (brace yourself) jogette.  Given that the last time I attempted to jog anywhere was 15 years ago, I am not going hell for leather.  God knows whether I will keep it up...   (feel free to mock and jeer and throw tomatoes).

I am thinking it is time to read some more H.G. Wells.  A while ago I read all of the big skiffy blockbusters back-to-back.  War of the Worlds and Dr Moreau both made a particular impression on me.  The Time Machine & The Invisible Man did not get under my skin in quite the same way, but were amazing stories, especially given the time they were written.

There is just one thing that bothers me about The Time Machine...  why does the protagonist not give the Morlocks a chance?  I mean, given a choice between the fluffy, airheaded Eloi and the ugly, advanced Morlocks, why would a scientist not want to try to bond with the Morlocks, or at least try to communicate?  They even oiled & polished his time machine and everything...

But anyway, now I fancy reading some of his later stuff - where he veered off into social commentary.  Has anyone read Kipps?  I might start with that...

Comments

[sara-lou.livejournal.com]

Skin = jogging and caffeine protest? :-)
(I have SO got to get back to the gym. If you and Jane keep posting about your energetic exercise explouts perhaps it will motivate me?)

[sara-lou.livejournal.com]

exploits even. Explouts sounds very unpleasant.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

You could be right about the skin... perhaps I should give up jogging! :-p

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

By the end of his career Wells was propounding some very unsavoury views on eugenics and technocrat utopias.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Really? I may have heard that before but forgotten.

I always find it a shame when an author's brilliant earlier work gets tarred by the later development of off-colour or unfashionable opinions... I noticed it with G. K. Chesterton, who had a truly wonderful way with words, but never gets mentioned anywhere without comments about his Catholicism being a major issue, as though that is the only definng character of his work. I suspect that he went right out of fashion as a result and is no longer read much in schools.

I wonder with Wells how many of his views were formed by the relentless onslaught of snobbery and belittlement that he was subjected to for most of his life... having used his brain to rise above his station, I have heard many anecdotes that suggest his higher-bred contemporaries were not willing to let him get away with it.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

when an author's brilliant earlier work gets tarred by the later development of off-colour or unfashionable opinions...

See Sir Arthur Conan-Dyle's later stuff on spiritualism and bloody fairies.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

And so incongruous from the man who gave us Holmes!

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

But he was to good a character to die. SOMe of thepastiches (Nicholas Meyer is one example) really are excellent.

I have an odd little book called "The strange case of Mrs Hudson's Cat", which is quantum physics expained through the medium of short-story length Holmes pastiches.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

That sounds cool... I might get a copy of that

[whiteshadow.livejournal.com]

Jogging sucks big time, when I was at school I was forced to do a cross country run through the streets of ... Greenford of all places.

It has to be said that to the surprise of all I came first ... this was managed very simply by catching the first bus that came along

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Ooh yes, cross country running is a peculiar form of torture that our schools like to put us through (shudder)