The Door in the Wall and Other Stories [Paperback]

H. G. Wells (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2004

The Door in the Wall: There was something in the very air of it that exhilarated, that gave one a sense of lightness and good happening and well being; there was something in the sight of it that made all its color clean and perfect and subtly luminous. In the instant of coming into it one was exquisitely glad -- as only in rare moments and when one is young and joyful one can be glad in this world. And everything was beautiful there. . . . Also included in this volume are "The Star," "A Dream of Armageddon," "The Cone," "A Moonlight Fable," "The Diamond Maker," "The Lord of the Dynamos," and "The Country of the Blind."

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5 1-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

H.G. WELLS (1866-1946)

Sometimes called the father of modern science fiction, Herbert George Wells was born on September 21, 1866 in Bromley, Kent, England. His father, a professional cricket player and shopkeeper, and his mother, a former lady's maid, raised Wells with the idea that he would find a place in the work world that they were accustomed. He aspired to a different place in society.

When he was thirteen, he left school to become a draper's apprentice, a job his family expected would be proper for a boy of his station. The work repelled him, however. He worked briefly in a drugstore, returned for a stint as a draper's assistant, then finally found a job as a teacher's assistant in a grammar school. Education and academia suited him well. In 1884 he entered college with a scholarship to study biology. He was able to study under one of the great biology teachers of the time, Thomas Henry Huxley, and Wells graduated in 1888.

The writings of Jules Verne undoubtably influenced Wells, and he wrote his first novel, The Time Machine, partly in response to this new kind of literature that Verne produced. The story appeared in various forms in magazines from 1888 to 1894 and was released in its current form in 1895. The book was successful, and Wells did not need to teach or worry about money from that time on.

Wells' early novels continued in the science fiction mode of The Time Machine. The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War Between the Worlds (1898) cemented his position within the genre. For many readers, these early novels are the extent of Wells' writing. He's the "time machine guy" or the "martian guy." Wells, however, wrote short stories, mainstream fiction and non-fiction essays his entire life, most of them espousing in some form or another his views on humanity, society and the direction he saw the world going. Some of these works were also science fictional in nature. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: Wildside Press (March 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809593076
• ISBN-13: 978-0809593071
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,383,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still fun to read, March 20, 2010

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Louie Louie (Saipan) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Door in the Wall and Other Stories (Kindle Edition)

These eight stories were better than I remembered them. In these stories, Wells wrote mainly about the time he lived in, and he is very capable of bringing the reader back to the time and helping them to see just what it was like. From a historical perspective, fascinating.

The plots are intriguing, and the characters are believable. Unlike Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who I think was only able to bring Holmes and Watson to life and found it difficult to write about other characters, Wells creates numerous characters that come alive.

Even the Country of the Blind, which I never liked much before, was interesting not just as a story but as a provocative statement on culture, religion and science.

I loved this book and highly recommend it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well told tales that can serve as parables, January 13, 2011

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Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Door in the Wall and Other Stories (Hardcover)

Wells, best known for his War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man, offers eight short stories in this volume. Many people do not realize that Wells was a very religious man, although his conception of religion and of God was somewhat different than that of many other people. Thus, many of his stories, interesting because of their plots, carry a sometimes subtle moral message. This can be seen in these tales.

The first The Door in the Wall raises questions about the meaning of life and satisfaction. Wallace was very smart and in later life very successful. His mother died when he was young and his father was too busy to play with him. He was very lonely as a child. He saw a green door in a white wall when he was five years old. He opened the door, entered, and discovered a warm friendly world with weed-less flowers and two friendly animals that played lovingly with him. There was also a beautiful woman who walked with him, held his hand and talked with him. There were other people there who were friendly and children his own age with whom he played. The woman brought him back outside the door, although he was reluctant to return. He cried at his loss of the world behind the green door.

His father punished him when he returned home for being late and whenever he tried to tell his father about the world behind the green door, but he never gave up his longing to return behind the door.

He saw the green door again during his school days, but did not enter because he didn't want to come to school late. He told his school mates about the green door but they mocked him. When he was seventeen, he saw it for the third time, while driving to Oxford to college. He did not stop his cab and enter the door because the delay would have caused him to lose his scholarship. Similarly, he didn't enter when he saw it a fourth time because of a girl and a chance for job advancement.

He told his story to his friend when he was in his thirties. He also told him that he had seen the door again three times this past year. He said he was tired of work and saw no meaning in it. He wanted to enter the door the next time that he saw it. He was found dead the next day on the street.

Reading the tale, we ask, did he enter the green door in the white wall after leaving his friend? What really is behind the door? Is this a parable and, if so, what is its message? Does the ending tell us that the man's yearning was unnatural and only leads to death? What is natural? What did the man miss that made his life unsatisfactory? Can we gain insight into Well's tale by comparing it to Franz Kafka's Before the Law, another story of a man who stood all of his life before a door, which he could have entered?

The seven other stories are equally intriguing. In the last, The Country of the Blind, Nunez stumbles into a country that was cut off from civilization for centuries, where all the inhabitants are blind, where the people developed their own culture and had their own ideas about the world that derived from their blindness. He discovers that the proverb "in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," is patently wrong." The opposite is true. Is Wells telling us that we live in a world of the blind that is turning us from what is proper, into slaves? Is there a relationship between the message of this last story and the first?

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars good stories, November 5, 2009

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Cynthia A. Thornton (Hot Springs, AR) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Door in the Wall and Other Stories (Kindle Edition)

I got this book in an instant on my Kindle and so far I love it. I haven't yet read all the stories but the ones I have read I have really enjoyed. It's really easy to read even though it's written in an old style.