British · 1866–1946
English novelist who invented science fiction as a literary form. Born into the lower middle class, he educated himself, taught biology, and began writing. The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds—in four years he produced templates for the genre. The scientific romances give way to social novels and utopian speculation. His politics were socialist and optimistic; World War I broke the optimism. He remains readable when contemporaries have faded. The concepts outlasted the prose.