In the days of the comet
by H.G. Wells
First published 1906 · English · 306 pages
- Novels
- Science fiction
A novel set in an England of poverty and resentment. Willie Leadford, a young working man, is bitter about his life and about a failed love affair, and his anger grows through the story. Then a comet approaches the Earth, and its passing changes everything about how people think and feel. Wells uses this fantastic event to ask what human society might become if jealousy, greed and fear were cleared away. It combines social realism with utopian speculation.
Quotes
He put down his pen and sighed the half-resentful sigh — "ah! you work, you! how you gratify and tire me!" — of a man who has been writing to his satisfaction.
This is the story that happy, active-looking old man in that pleasant place had written.
I have set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people closely connected with me, primarily to please myself.
Already we begin to forget how modern an invention is personal cleanliness. It is a fact that Parload had never stripped for a swim in his life; never had a simultaneous bath all over his body since his childhood. Not one in fifty of us did in the days of which I am telling you.