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Tony Miksak

WORDS ON BOOKS by Tony Miksak for KZYX&Z-FM, 90.7 Philo CA
Airs Sunday, September 17, 2006 at 10:55 am, repeated Wednesday, Sept. 20 at 1 pm

Title: A Biological Fantasia

(MUSIC UP) This is Tony Miksak with a few Words on Books.

Wesleyan University Press invites you to "look inside our catalog" for new books by, among others, H. G. Wells.

H. G. Wells, that incurably optimistic scientific utopianist, as some might call him, and some certainly have, died in 1946. That Wesleyan can call his book "new" speaks volumes about a) Wells' amazing ability to write long after death, or b) sloppy copy editing.

I choose b) sloppy copy.

The editors at Wesleyan really have resurrected an H. G. Wells novel from obscurity by republishing the short novel "Star Begotten" along with much scholarly annotation by John Huntington.

It's an interesting, old-fashioned book. It's old-fashioned in the sense that the story is carried forward by a lot of talking amongst educated white men. And they refer to cosmic rays and Martians. That's very old-fashioned.

I mean, really, who thinks the next War of the Worlds will be brought to us by Martians? Slippery characters out of the sea, maybe. Monsters awoken by the melting ice of global warming, maybe. Not Martians. We have probes up there at this very moment, sifting the red dust.

In "War of the Worlds" H. G. Wells had aliens from Mars landing on earth, and they weren't friendly. "Star Begotten" suggests the Martians are back – this time not in person, but sending cosmic rays to earth in order to force genetic mutations and the slow creation of a new super-human race of rational, peace-loving humans.

The characters in "Star Begotten" move quickly from wild guesses to some certainty that a new human race is being born.

This version of "Star Begotten" arrives with an introduction half as long as the novel, plus 47 notes to the Introduction. The novel has 77 annotations.

Some of the notes seem directed to the ill-informed (read: undergraduates): "Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936); father of behaviorism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work on conditioned reflexes."

And some notes delve into lesser known reaches of Wells and his influences.

By the way, does the name Pavlov ring a bell?*

Wells adopts those cosmic rays from Mars in order to make polemical points. Through the characters' belief in a new breed of humanity the author makes clear what he hopes for the future.

One character says, "...because human society is a going concern, the main working ideas have never been replaced... the social ideology has become a terrific accumulation of old clutter which now, simply through the wear and tear of terms misused, has come to mean anything and nothing."

That's a quite modern statement of alienation. Pretty much any group of disaffected citizens could claim it as their own.

Wells' unrelenting criticism of the culture can be found in many of his works, from "The Time Machine" on through "An Outline of History" to his last work, "Mind at the End of Its Tether" in which he suggested that scientific advances such as the atom bomb were "fatally outdistancing* man's intellectual and social development."

Wells still is widely read for his science fiction. His more didactic writings await a new audience, and may find them in editions such as this handsome one from Wesleyan.

(MUSIC UP) You can subscribe to the email version of Words on Books by writing to amiksak@mcn.org. Transcripts are available on the KZYX web site.

Notes:

* From Nobelprize.org: "Pavlov became interested in studying reflexes when he saw that the dogs drooled without the proper stimulus. Although no food was in sight, their saliva still dribbled. It turned out that the dogs were reacting to lab coats. Every time the dogs were served food, the person who served the food was wearing a lab coat. Therefore, the dogs reacted as if food was on its way whenever they saw a lab coat.
In a series of experiments, Pavlov then tried to figure out how these phenomena were linked. For example, he struck a bell when the dogs were fed. If the bell was sounded in close association with their meal, the dogs learnt to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling."

* "Fatally outdistancing" is cribbed from the Wells entry in "Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition."

"Star Begotten: A Biological Fantasia" by H. G. Wells. Wesleyan University Press hardcover $22.95. ISBN 0819567299.
Originally published in 1937 when Wells was 70 years old. Second in a series of four short novels.

In 2004 Wesleyan published "H.G. Wells: Traversing Time" by W. Warren Wagar in their "Early Classics of Science Fiction" series. Hardcover $34.95. ISBN 0819567256.
From the publisher: "Wagar contends that one cannot fully understand or enjoy the science fiction without exploring the mind that produced it. This accessible overview takes the reader through dozens of Wells’ most important works, following the twists and turns of his thought as he struggled with the great issues of human provenance and destiny."

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