"O Realist of the Fantastic!" - Joseph Conrad on HG Wells.
Collectively, HG Wells, Jules Verne, and Hugo Gernsback--publisher of the first science fiction magazine and the namesake for the Hugo Awards--are known as the Fathers of Science Fiction. Wells' best known works include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He was a political socialist and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.
Some of the most interesting aspects of Wells' life were his prophetic social predictions. In his time, he foretold of numerous innovations: aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television, and even the World Wide Web. He always strove to make the story as credible as possible even if the reader knew the events or circumstances were impossible – this literary give-in is now referred to as “suspension of disbelief.” Even though time travel and invisibility had been written about before, they'd never received such a commitment to realism, explanation, and evidence.
Wells wrote:
"the more impossible the story I had to tell, the more ordinary must be the setting, and the circumstances.”
This method is frequently known as Wells's Law, which dictates that a science fiction story should contain only a single extraordinary assumption. “As soon as the magic trick has been done, the whole business of the fantasy writer is to keep everything else human and real. Touches of prosaic detail are imperative and a rigorous adherence to the hypothesis. Any extra fantasy outside the cardinal assumption immediately gives a touch of irresponsible silliness to the invention.”
Wells' came by his understandings of science through rigorous study. In London, he was a student under “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Henry Huxley. Inured by Darwinian Theory, Wells' invented the literary trope of 'Uplift', pioneered in The Island of Dr. Moreau, wherein intelligent beings evolve certain species of less-intelligent animals through scientific interventions such as genetic engineering.
In The World Set Free (1914), Wells was the first to describe a nuclear weapon and depict its subsequent radioactive decay. Though scientists were aware of the natural decay of radium, Wells invented the idea of harnessing an acceleration of that process to produce bombs that “continue to explode” for days on end. In 1932, The World Set Free had a massive impression on Leo Szilard, the physicist and the conceiver of nuclear chain reaction.
His nonfiction bestseller, Anticipations (1901) predicted the sexual revolution, the formation of a European Union, and the way that cars and trains would disperse dense, city populations into smaller suburbs.
Wells' is also renowned in the gaming community for the idea of miniature table-top war games. Fans of Warhammer, 50k, Heroscape, and Heroclix owe a debt to Wells for setting out the rules for fighting battles with miniature toy soldiers in his books Floor Games (1911) and Little Wars (1913).
Of course, the simple act of predicting an event or technology doesn't necessarily prepare humanity for what to do in the face of that inevitable evolution. Wells' growing cynicism in his later years must have been a sort of Cassandra effect – knowing the future can be as much a burden as a blessing. In fact, as Wells approached death, he told confidants that his epitaph should read:
“I told you so. You damned fools.”