This edition has no real critical material or even printing history. Thus I had to look the title up to find out when the book was originally published (1906, to save duplicate efforts). This edition is a cheap edition, a 2nd printing of a Berkley Highland edition. It's dated 1969, and has, not an ISBN #, but an 'SBN' #, so it must be from before the establishment of ISBN #s.I've gotten to page 76, and I'm getting to the point where I'm looking up and saying "Why doesn't that comet hurry UP, already?" Granted, I'm not looking forward to all animals losing consciousness. I hope the exudation didn't reach into the oceans, for example, because many oceanic creatures need to be conscious to breathe. But still...The narrative voice (outside the parts that are italicized in this edition) is looking back, and keeps shaking his head remembering the kind of person he was when he was an older child (the age of the narrator in the 'days of the Comet' is established as being in his late teens--probably about 19). Yet there are still offhand elements that are NOT apologized for. In a description of the Boer War (just finished at the time of the book's first publication', the narrator casually uses the 'n' word, with no apologies. What became of people in other parts of the world? And the book has very few women in it. There are some in the background, but there's nothing like parity. And I have to say I wonder about where the children are. I've been looking around the Dantesque landscape, and I don't see any children. Surely there must have been some preteens SOMEWHERE in early 20th Century Britain? Even if older children were integrated into the workforce starting at about the age of 16 (by that time I think child labor laws would have been universal in Britain, but I doubt whether they included children in their late teens), there should be SOME children about. E Nesbit's books, set in about the same period, are swarming with children.The landscape depicted is nightmarish. Have things changed since? Some ways. There is better furniture, most places: and almost everybody now has running water. Hot and cold, even. Some things, however, are very little changed. I don't care for promiscuity, but I also don't approve of monogamy. And the continued insistence of the narrator that love implies a patent of ownership ('I was hers and she was mine') makes me hope that one part of the 'Change' will at least change that.We'll have to see. For the moment, I'm still waiting for the Comet to do its stuff.One technical point: the narrator keeps referring to his place of (former) employment as a 'pot-bank'. Having no idea what that meant, I looked it up. It means a pottery factory, apparently. I'm not really clear what was being manufactured, though. Not indoor toilets, anyway, because too few houses would have had indoor plumbing.Done. There's only one mention of whales in the whole book, and it's in regard to caricatures. We'll just have to hope that they survived because they NEVER shut down their whole brains in sleep, but rest parts of their brains in rotation. Bats are mentioned, and it's implied that they survived: so apparently enough of them managed to get safely down to a resting place. As for the mental changes, I have to say that the notions of what needs to be changed are pretty firmly culturally bound. Thus, for example, the 'New' society doesn't stop using coal: they simply learn to use it more efficiently. And much of what they do is downright appalling. Granted that much of the material things of life at the time were inconvenient, badly designed, etc. But the materials they were made from should NOT be burned. Not only would the fires be heavily polluting (no matter how well their outgasses were filtered, but also the waste is unconscionable. The idea that people were deliberately walking among the fires, breathing the fumes, makes me shudder.Worse, the deliberate destruction of old arts is as bad as the other bookburners in history. But it's not just books. It's also paintings, statuary, etc. And while the furniture that is destroyed is often made of inferior materials ('deal', by the way, is now called 'chipboard'), other furniture is not. It's badly designed and badly fitted: but that can be fixed.Living in what amounts to renovated mansions (converted to dormitories, refectories, etc), while a temporary phase, is not anything like ideal. I understand that it's a temporary expedient. The rebuilt cities are argued to be a lot better than private housing. But I doubt it. I understand the idea of having public facilities for things like cooking, child care, etc. I've read the suggestions of people like Elizabeth Hawes, Bertrand Russell, etc, as well, of course, as The Dispossessed. But I think there SHOULD, nevertheless, be private cooking facilities, etc at least available to those who WANT to cook for themselves. And, as someone who has always been unsociable, I want it to be possible to go off by oneself, either for short or long periods of time. I don't think, despite frequently being bullied on the point, that it's in any way perverse to be a 'loner'.The abolition of the notion of romance as a proprietary relationship is, I recognize, necessary. I'd be glad to think that no relationship would be exclusive: but I'd like to know more about what replaced the ownership model. Wells apparently didn't give serious consideration for the rights of people to have few or no sexual relations: or to refuse to have relations to people they dislike. This is one of the main problems I've always had with people who espoused the 'free love' concept.I should also point out that there's very little weather in this book. The people move temporarily into tents during the 'year of scaffolding' (query: what did they make the scaffolding FROM? Most of the scaffolding I've seen is made from boards. Did they disassemble preexisting structures to make the scaffolding? And who made the piping for the frames?). Were there no storms at all during that year? did it never get cold? Or hot? Or windy? And come to that, there are people who don't LIKE sunlight. How do WE get around in the new communities?One other thing that Wells never seems to consider with whether agriculture has anything whatEVER to do with 'nature'. It doesn't now, and it especially didn't then. The adoption of tractors makes it less laborious for draft horses, true. But it doesn't make the processes any more 'natural', or more sustainable. Wells apparently thought at the time that 'motorcars' could be dispensed with. In the book, they're replaced with electric trains (?fueled how?). It was probably already too late for that, even in the first decade of the twentieth century. I'm not sure if electric trains would have been better, or worse, or pretty much the same as what did happen. But it's moot now, anyway, since the odds are it won't happen, even IF some such mystical 'Change' as described in this book should come along, much belated, in the twenty-first century.One thing I seriously doubt is whether the change to hyper-energized thinking is really beneficial, to individuals or to the society as a whole. Nobody should be subjected to unremitting toil. This is true. But nobody should be censured for avoiding toil, either. As Lillian Gilbreth (the 'time-and-motion' expert now best remembered as the mother in Cheaper by The Dozen) once pointed out, if you want to improve the efficiency of a process, you'd do well to seek out the laziest worker in the place: because the lazy are often extremely ingenious in coming up with ways to get things done with less effort. I don't think I'd care at all to live with the hyperactive people from after the Change. One would have to hope that the younger generations would gradually learn to use the extra time their ancestors have bought them to REST. Yes, continue to learn. Yes, continue to do whatever work remains necessary. But then take some time OFF, and begin to learn to use their leisure time in quieter pursuits,There's also very little indication of a change in the status of women. The elderly of both sexes get a better shake, it's clear. But what about young women? The viewpoint character discovers, to his horror, that he once had a sister, who died in infancy. Perhaps no mother after the Change will have that horrible loss. But how would it have been achieved that comparable children would not die?And for that matter, people in other parts of the world (in, say, Equatorial Guinea, or Surinam, or Bhutan) are not so much neglected as more or less defined out of existence. They don't appear in the story at ALL as actors: they're just treated as exemplars of how bad things used to be. But where are the Filipino representatives to the World State? And what form does it take? If the parliamentarians of the old state have been cleansed and purified, what form of new government do they create? And why, for that matter, should it be them who create it?There is enough left out of this story to make whole volumes of other books. The story is presented as the personal reminiscences of a man who passed through the Change. But it's apparently no more than a hobby. Who is taking the position of (say) the Federal Writers' Project of the WPA, and collecting the narratives of people from all over the world?
IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. (1906). H. G. Wells. **.tWells managed to combine several different genres into one work – or, I should say he tried to combine them. These included Romance, Politics, and Science Fiction. It all starts out as a basic love story: Willie, our chief character and narrator, falls in love with Nettie, a young woman from the next village, but talks himself into not loving her and writes her letters to that effect. One night, he talks himself back into loving her and decides to walk the 17 miles to her house to visit with her and talk to her directly. When he gets there, he is treated coldly (what could you expect?) and leaves early. On his way out, he comes across Verrall, the son of a landed family which happens to be his family’s landlord. While walking home, he puts one and one together and realizes that Nettie has changed her affections to Verrall. He starts a slow burn and the next day buys a revolver. He is determined to kill them both and then commit suicide. Meanwhile, the world is watching a comet growing bigger and bigger in the sky. Unlike most comets, this one has a green tinge to it, suggesting that it contains an element not found on Earth (??). Willie then makes the trek back to Nettie’s house, where his mother tells him that Nettie has run off with Verrall. The family, of course, is horror stricken. Their honor has been offended and they will not be able to face their neighbors again. Willie proceeds to track the couple down with the objective of killing them both. At the same time that he finds them, the comet strikes the Earth. A green gas envelopes the Earth and puts most of the world’s population under for a short while. When everyone awakes, they find that their attitudes have changed considerably. There is no longer class consiciousness or the types of aggressive behavior typical of humans. Wells has now provided us with his Utopia. It doesn’t take long to learn that Utopia is really boring, but Wells continues to hammer away at his readers, trying to instill in them the love of his form of Socialism. The second half of the book is deadly dull after the comet hits, and I found myself skimming. This is one of the author’s lesser works.
What do You think about In The Days Of The Comet (2002)?
What an odd little book. I was surprised to see that Wells wrote this later than all his other famous, hyper-influential SF novels, because it reads more like an early failed experiment, but it sure is interesting.The first section, a realistic portrait of a not very interesting Victorian young man, is quite a slog; you can tell that this novel was not serialized, because most readers would've given up after several chapters about his career decisions and romantic disappointments, wondering when he'd get to the damn comet.Then [spoiler:] there's a comet, and everyone is scared, but instead of destroying the world, it saves it-- since as luck would have it, the comet is basically made out of magic Prozac. And then the rest of the book is a utopia, but since it's a new one rather than an established one, everyone's trying to adjust to no longer being screwed up and neurotic.Unlike a lot of idea-based utopian narratives, Wells pays attention to what it might feel like, personally, to be cured of anxiety-- how promising yet totally weird it would be-- and sometimes he gets it across well, as early on when a guy accidentally breaks his ankle and notices that although it hurts and all, he's not freaking out, it's just one of those things that happens. And the earlier realistic slog pays off somewhat as the narrator realizes how all the vague angst he'd been going on about was just silly and unnecessary, but he still feels duty-bound to keep worrying about it, even though he's now physically unable to worry; he keeps trying to stay jealous of his ex-girlfriend and her new guy, even as she's trying to tell him that everything's cool because now they can all be lovers. That stuff rang true to me; Wells understood that when people have spent their whole lives learning how to be serious and unhappy, they're not going to want all that effort to have been wasted.On the other hand, it also has one of the weirdest bits of oblivious racism I've ever seen. There's a post-comet scene where some businessmen and politicians are testifying ruefully about what jerks they used to be, and one of them is a Jewish banker... not just any Jewish banker, but the Jewish banker, the creepy greedy smelly sneaky one of anti-semitic legend. But now, like everyone else, he's a decent guy; and he tells his own story, which is basically: "Wow, we Jews sure were greedy and awful! But it was just because of our mental hangups about being so weird and inferior! Now, thanks to the comet, we can all just get along." It's particularly bizarre because Wells obviously thought of this as an enlightened view-- i.e. they're not genetically bad, they're just all twisted and evil for psychological/cultural reasons. And yet, ew.It's no mystery why the book isn't well known: it basically has no plot, and in the end it's a big "wouldn't it be nice if" relying on a deus ex machina. (And although it's always appealing to think that we could be awesome if we just weren't being held back by some kind of psychic debris-- Gurdjieff, Colin Wilson, and L. Ron Hubbard come to mind-- Wells refuses to give us any superpowers as a result of this, other than happiness, so SF readers may feel cheated.) But because it never caught on like his other books (many of which created whole subgenres), I found it kind of fresh and surprising despite the clunky aspects.Oddly, the closest connection I can think of in later SF is in the work of Samuel Delany, who had two very different takes on parts of the premise: Triton, where human nature hasn't changed but there's still a (sort of) utopia where a neurotic guy has trouble adjusting, and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, where you can get a treatment to make you incapable of worrying about anything but then you immediately get sold into slavery.
—Eli
For those of you who, like me, are quite avid Wells' readers/fans this is not your usual Sci-Fi classic.H.G Wells appears to have been trying something new with this book as he attempts to intertwine science, socialism and a love triangle. In the Days of the Comet is set in early 20th century England and covers Willie, a socialist who is angry and frustrated with everything to do with the world he lives in. The only thing Willie finds beautiful and tranquil is the love of his life, Nettie. The story follows Willie and his lust for Nettie as he finds himself perplexed by what the love of his life decides to do. The comet is referred back to quite often and eventually, when it hits, it brings some sort of cleansing gas with it, ridding the world of hatred and jealousy. People can finally 'see' the world for what beauty it really is. As usual, Wells' creates a vivid picture and engrosses the reader in his story. If you're willing to stray a little from the hardcore Sci-Fi that is quite evident of Wells' usual books then you will enjoy this. I was pleasantly surprised reading this book as I did not expect much after reading some reviews.
—Luke Meakin
I won't mince words. I love this book with all my heart. But it is not for reasons that the average fan of science fiction will likely sympathize with. It's been said that this work lacks many of the classic SF elements that his earlier books showed, and this is certainly true. You could argue that it is not terribly effective as SF at all. But what it sets out to be, it succeeds in completely. It is, I think, Wells' personal manifesto. I've heard it called a "socialist screed" and being the pinko I am, I wouldn't mind if it were, but I don't believe it is. I think of it as a beautiful work of pure Humanism. If it fails to entertain on certain levels, it gives us something finer, which is a peek into what humanity has the capacity to become, if only we can keep from destroying ourselves before we get there.
—Fenriss
