Wednesday 21 June 2017

Wellsian Themes

I identify four Wellsian themes as:

space travel;
time travel;
alien invasion;
future society or, more specifically, future history.

We have on this and other blogs considered contributions to these themes by:

Olaf Stapledon;
CS Lewis;
James Blish;
Poul Anderson;
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle -

- and I do not think that it is necessary to enumerate these contributions yet again. Anderson, of course, makes massive contributions to three of these themes (Tau Zero for space travel!) and an original contribution to alien invasion. The present post is occasioned by my realization that Fred Hoyle also contributes to all four -

alien invasion: The Black Cloud and Rockets In Ursa Major;
space travel: Into Deepest Space;
time travel of a sort and a future history summarized: October The First Is Too Late.

Hail Hoyle!

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

My thought was Niven/Pournelle and Stirling both wrote novels featuring what might happen after comets struck the Earth in LUCIFER'S HAMMER and THE PESHAWAR LANCERS. With Stirling's book giving us persons with some ability to "foresee" what might happen and a truly vile religion (for that matter, Niven/Pournelle also shows us an evil religion or ideology).

And Niven/Pournelle has invading aliens dropping an asteroid in the Indian Ocean to make Earth more comfortable for them and to help break resistance to them.

Sean