H.G. Wells: Realist of the Fantastic

On August 13, 1946, about a year after the end of World War II, Herbert George Wells died in his apartment in Hanover Terrace, overlooking Regent's Park in London. The elderly writer had chosen to remain in London throughout the war, despite most English intellectuals preferring to retreat to the countryside. London, where he was born in the vast suburbs nearly eighty years earlier into a lower-middle-class family, had always been the center of his life. In the metropolis, which had recently become the capital of the largest empire in the world and where Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories had radically taken hold, Wells was educated at Imperial College, a university institution where T.H. Huxley, one of Darwin's disciples, taught biology. This article, titled "H.G. Wells, realista del fantastico" by Carlo Pagetti and Anita Romanello, reflects on Wells's life and his connection to London, highlighting his scientific education and his literary contributions that blended realism with the fantastic.