That's my main impression from a lot of texts written by Wells about the "modern" world. Reading them, it's easy not only to recognize that he had wrong predictions, but even that he didn't have a good enough idea about the world of his time. Interestingly enough, in spite of that, some of his observation and conclusions based on them, when they were correct as far as his myopic view reached, can be indeed lucid.
Still, I'm very sure that he's not at all unique, neither in his time nor in our current. Most of us are myopic as soon as we start to write about the "big" topics, and even more when our political biases are to be present. In many decades, whatever we saw wrong will be much more obvious.
Like GB Shaw, HG Wells (both brilliant men) was completely taken in by the monster called Stalin (Uncle Joe) who ran Russia from Lenin's death in 1924 to 1953 when he died.
βIn him I realised that Communism could after all, in spite of Marx, be enormously creative. After the tiresome class-war fanatics I had been encountering among the Communists, [β¦], this amazing little man, with his frank admission of the immensity and complication of the project of Communism and his simple concentration upon its realisation, was very refreshing. He at least has a vision of a world changed over and planned and built afresh,β
Anyone who has romantic illusions about that period should read Montefiore's `Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar`.
That's my main impression from a lot of texts written by Wells about the "modern" world. Reading them, it's easy not only to recognize that he had wrong predictions, but even that he didn't have a good enough idea about the world of his time. Interestingly enough, in spite of that, some of his observation and conclusions based on them, when they were correct as far as his myopic view reached, can be indeed lucid.
Still, I'm very sure that he's not at all unique, neither in his time nor in our current. Most of us are myopic as soon as we start to write about the "big" topics, and even more when our political biases are to be present. In many decades, whatever we saw wrong will be much more obvious.