Tuesday, January 19, 2010
H.G. Wells: Bitter old hack
I consider Fritz Lang's Metropolis to be one of the most amazing and influential films in the history of cinema, scifi in particular. Mr. Wells, however, thought it was "silly." What a jerk. His petty and dismissive review, originally printed in the New York Times in April 1927, is available for your perusal.
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2 comments:
This is one of those quotes I keep around for when people tell me people used to be more perceptive and thoughtful and the internet has made us stupid and blah blah blah. It's not suprising that this is Wells's take, as he's exactly the sort of sci-fi writer I dislike: the sort who thinks fiction is basically a petri-dish for engineers. I always went more for Jules Verne (I think of those two dudes as the Beatles/Stones of early sci-fi, though in that sense I'm firmly in the camp of Poe, who is the equivalent of Black Sabbath) who understood fiction as a hertiage of the collective imagination, as opposed to Wells who was more of a flag-planter type. Verne is still fun to read (for me, at least) because he loves little details in the same way Lang does, while I've never been able to get anywhere with Wells -- good ideas, poor execution.
You might have hit on why I never really got into Wells - not enough vibrancy or imagination and too much stick-up-his-ass. No soul.
My 13-year old niece is into Poe these days. You make me think I oughta try out some Sabbath on her.
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