Abstract
In many of his short stories and scientific romances Wells expressed his sense of ‘the aimless torture in creation’:43 by which he meant not simply the latent evil and cruelty in the human make-up but the pain and violence endemic in nature. As a small child he had studied a copy of Sturm’s Reflections in which his mother had obliterated with stamp-paper a picture representing hell-fire. For some, years terrifying visions of hell and torture animated his boyhood nightmares. Later he was to express these visions in fictional form in describing the Morlocks of The Time Machine and the vivisection experiments in The Island of Doctor Moreau. The gist of such tales as ‘The Reconciliation’, ‘In the Avu Observatory’, ‘Pollock and the Porrah Man’ and others is a disturbing awareness of the malevolence at large in the universe: a haunting sense that man, for all his pretensions to rationality and culture, is surrounded by unknown and unpredictable forces redolent of evil.
Now and then, though I rarely admit it, the universe projects itself towards me in a hideous grimace.
H. G. Wells, Preface to The Scientific Romances of H. G. Wells
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Copyright information
© 1992 J. R. Hammond
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hammond, J.R. (1992). A Hideous Grimace. In: H. G. Wells and the Short Story. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376670_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376670_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-38922-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37667-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)