Stories such as “The Moth,” “The Cone,” “The Story of the Late Mr Elvesham,” The Country of the Blind, “The Door in the Wall,” and “The Red Room” could be considered standalone literary masterworks regardless of their speculative nature, and it is for this reason that Wells – before his literary decline in the 1920s and 1930s – was considered by many to be Charles Dickens’ natural heir in social fiction just as he was known unequivocally to be Verne’s successor in fantasy.Īs a devotee of Darwin, Wells – who began his career as a high school science teacher – was keenly aware that repeated patterns of behavior reinforced the outcomes of future generations, and he was convinced that mankind was steadily evolving due to the hardening avenues of society: to wealth, comfort, and prestige for the rich, and to poverty, misery, and subjugation for the poor. Wells befriended Crane and Conrad, and their writings were collectively seismic in their effect on literature during the 1890s. Wells’ fiction bears resemblance to that of many of his generation’s most renowned realists: Jack London, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, and – most especially – Stephen Crane, both is substance and in style. Wells’ writing was outstandingly effective during this period, and – had they not often explored subjects of horror, fantasy, and science fiction – they would have attracted academic attention for the skill which he demonstrated at prose, theme, and characterization. The man is driven to the brink of madness, and comits arson in a desperate bid to free himself from an enemy that he cannot see. Chillingly, the creature only makes its appearance known by drinking standing water, and by kneeling on its victim’s chest during his sleep.

Twenty years later, Guy de Maupassant wrote a similar story, “The Horla,” about an invisible alien entity which latches onto a hapless man, leeching his strength with its vampiric power without ever being seen. The beast ultimately starves to death, and when a plaster cast is made of the corpse, an unearthly monster’s visage is revealed. Horrorstruck, they tie it to the bed and wait for it to surrender. Yet he has a hold on something, and his friends quickly verify this. Wrestling in the darkness, he is quickly aided by friends who turn up the gas to reveal – nothing. Most famously, Fitz-James O’Brien wrote “What Was It? A Mystery” in which a man is falling to sleep on his bed when a creature lands on top of him. Less magical stories made their way into modern literature, usually with more of an aura of horror.

The invisible man wells