13 August

Science fiction writer, historian, vegetarian, anti-vivisectionist and socialist, H G Wells died today in 1946. Wells stood as a socialist candidate for London University and was once a member of the Fabian Society but left after a failed attempt to take it over, using his experience as the basis of his novel The New Machiavelli (1911).

‘That Anarchist world, I admit, is our dream; we do believe – well, I, at any rate, believe this present world, this planet, will some day bear a race beyond our most exalted and temerarious dreams, a race begotten of our wills and the substance of our bodies, a race, so I have said it, ‘who will stand upon the earth as one stands upon a footstool, and laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars,’ but the way to that is through education and discipline and law. Socialism is the preparation for that higher Anarchism … Socialism is the schoolroom of true and noble Anarchism, wherein by training and restraint we shall make free men.

‘_ H G Wells, New Worlds for Old (1908)