Star- Begotten E-Book

H G Wells

• Herausgeber: Studium Legis
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Star Begotten is a 1937 novel by H. G. Wells. It tells the story of a series of men who conjecture upon the possibility of the human race being altered, by genetic modification, by Martians to replace their own dying planet. The first (British) edition of this novel gives the title as two words: Star Begotten. The title is hyphenated in the first U.S. edition: Star-Begotten. The book readdresses the idea of the existence of Martians, which Wells had written about in The War of the Worlds (1898). The dialogue of Star Begotten makes brief references to Wells's earlier novel, referring to it as having been written by "Jules Verne, Conan Doyle, one of those fellows".

Leseprobe

Star-Begotten

A Biological Fantasia

H. G. Wells

Table of Contents

The Mind of Mr. Joseph Davis Is Greatly Troubled

Mr. Joseph Davis Learns about Cosmic Rays

Mr. Joseph Davis Wrestles with an Incredible Idea

Dr. Holdman Stedding Is Infected with the Idea

Professor Ernest Keppel Takes up the Idea in his Own Peculiar Fashion

Opening Phases of the Great Eugenic Research

The World Begins to Hear about the Martians

How These Star–Begotten People May Presently Get Together

Professor Keppel Is Inspired To Foretell the End Of Humanity

Mr. Joseph Davis Tears Up a Manuscript

Chapter One

The Mind of Mr. Joseph Davis Is Greatly Troubled

1

This is the story of an idea and how it played about in the minds of a number of intelligent people.

Whether there was any reality behind this idea it is not the business of the storyteller to say. The reader must judge for himself. One man believed it without the shadow of a doubt and he shall be the principal figure in the story.

Maybe we have not heard the last of this idea. It spread from the talk of a few people into magazines and the popular press. It had a vogue. You certainly heard of it at the time though perhaps you have forgotten. Popular attention waned. Now the thing flickers about in people’s minds, not quite dead and not quite alive, disconnected and ineffective. It is a queer and almost incredible idea, but yet not absolutely incredible. It is a bare possibility that this thing is really going on.

This idea arose in the mind of Mr. Joseph Davis, a man of letters, a sensitive, intelligent, and cultivated man. It came to him when he was in a state of neurasthenia, when the strangest ideas may invade and find a lodgment in the mind.