Tag: H. G. Wells

Japanese Steampunk: Science, Religion, and Technology in ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’

Other

The retrofuturism of steampunk literature relies often on representations of science fiction and fantasy to construct neo-Victorian alternative histories populated with advanced technology pushing the views of scientific progress. These narratives not only imagine new possibilities for the future, but also situate their alternative histories within a framework that juxtaposes scientific advancement against the notion of faith and religious dogma. In the case of Shonen manga, Japanese comics and graphic novels written for young male audiences, the steampunk genre is

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The Socialist Utopia as Child’s Play: The Games of H. G. Wells and E. Nesbit

Other, Teaching the Victorians

The first edition of H. G. Wells’s 1911 publication Floor Games, a manual for a worldbuilding game for children, opens with a declaration: [On a floor] may be made an infinitude of imaginative games, not only keeping boys and girls happy for days together, but building up a framework of spacious and inspiring ideas in them for after life. The British Empire will gain new strength from nursery floors.[1] The concept that child’s play could alter the child’s future —

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The Endowment of Motherhood Wars of the 1900s

Other

Who doesn’t love Mother? Consider two scenarios that faced late Victorian and Edwardian social reformers and opinion makers: working-class mother tending the family’s oh-so-many children while father drinks up his wages at the local public house (I’m thinking of the premise of Reginald Cripps’s Public House Reform); and, moving up a notch, mother pointlessly tending the family’s suburban villa (“The Laurels” of George and Weedon Grossmiths’ Pooter sagas) and anxiously watching one or two children (all the family can afford),

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Humans vs. Animals: Reimagining the Role of Martians in H.G. Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’

Other, Television Shows

If you have ever read or heard of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898), then you will be familiar with its role in the literary world of science fiction fantasy and reality. With the recent launch of a new BBC three-part adaptation of Wells’ classic tale, there is no better time to discuss the novel in a new light, reimagine the role of Martians and provide new critical insight into the relationship between the human and the

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Steven McLean, The Future as a Punchline: H. G. Wells’s Comic Celebrity

Published in JVC

Steven McLean is author of The Early Fiction of H. G. Wells: Fantasies of Science (2009) and the editor of H. G. Wells: Interdisciplinary Essays (2008). As well as a number of articles on Wells, Steven has written on Emile Zola and edited George Griffith’s scientific romance The Angel of the Revolution (2012) for Victorian Secrets. His most recent work is on literature and aeronautics, an area he has published on in the Journal of Literature and Science and in

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Steven McLean, Hurtling into Futurity: H. G. Wells at 150

Published in JVC

Steven McLean is author of The Early Fiction of H. G. Wells: Fantasies of Science (2009) and the editor of H. G. Wells: Interdisciplinary Essays (2008). As well as a number of articles on Wells, Steven has written on Emile Zola and edited George Griffith’s scientific romance The Angel of the Revolution (2012) for Victorian Secrets. His most recent work is on literature and aeronautics, an area he has published on in the Journal of Literature and Science and in

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The Past is Red: Some New Departures in the Historiography of Victorian Socialism

Book Reviews

The Making of British Socialism, by Mark Bevir, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011, xiii + 350 pages, £24.95 (hardback), ISBN 0-691-15083-3 Ecology and the Literature of the British Left: The Red and the Green, edited by John Rignall and H. Gustav Klaus in association with Valentine Cunningham, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, xi + 267, £60 (hardback), ISBN 1-4094-1822-1 William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda, 1880-1914, by Anna Vaninskaya, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010, viii

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Roundtable on Paul St George’s Telectroscope – Paul St George

Victorians Beyond the Academy

The post below is Paul St George’s initial response to the questions posed in the JVC Online roundtable on Paul St George’s Telectroscope. Paul St George is an artist and the creator of the Telectroscope. To view the questions and ongoing conversation, as well as the other participants’ initial responses, use the links below. Questions & Ongoing Conversation || Jay Clayton || David L. Pike || Paul St George I thought I would join this conversation by answering one of

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Bloggers Fair: Mark Blacklock’s ‘The Fairyland of Geometry’

Victorians Beyond the Academy

All-too-infrequently updated, The Fairyland of Geometry is a blog on which I post material surrounding my PhD research into the late-nineteenth-century engagement with the idea of higher-dimensioned space. The thesis aims to understand and describe how this engagement altered the spatial imaginary of the period by examining the passage of the idea across disparate cultural terrains, departing from August Mobius’s 1827 paper on barycentric calculus, in which he tentatively speculated a fourth dimension of space as a useful idea in

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