Men Like Gods

In Men Like Gods (1923), Wells sends the weary journalist Mr. Barnstaple and a party of contemporary English travellers into a parallel world whose inhabitants have achieved rational freedom, scientific mastery, and social harmony. The novel is a late "scientific romance" inflected by Menippean satire: plot matters less than contrast, dialogue, and speculative exposition. Set against post-First World War malaise, it revisits Wells's lifelong utopian question-whether modern humanity can outgrow nationalism, superstition, and competitive possessiveness. Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), trained in biology under T. H. Huxley's influence and shaped by Fabian socialism, wrote from the double perspective of scientist and social critic. His early fantasies imagined catastrophe and evolution; his later fiction increasingly argued for education, world organization, and planned progress. Men Like Gods reflects both his optimism about reason and his impatience with muddled liberal England. Readers interested in classic science fiction, utopian thought, or the intellectual history of the interwar period will find the book rewarding. Though more argumentative than dramatic, it remains lively, ironic, and provocatively earnest-a compelling document of Wells's belief that another human order is imaginable, if not easily attained.