The Invisible Man (Apple Classics) [Paperback]

H. G. Wells (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996

H.G. wells' classic is back. A mysterious stranger wrapped in bandages from head to toe arrives in town, and mysterious, terrible things begin happening. No one knows if he's responsible until he becomes invisible . . . right before their eyes.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Two of Wells's masterpieces get the red-carpet treatment here in these luxurious editions. Along with annotated texts, they feature scholarly introductions and appendixes, bibliographies, illustrations, and indexes. Though they are perhaps a tad pricey for most public libraries, academic collections supporting English departments should definitely invest in these volumes.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Wells's masterpieces get the red-carpet treatment here in these luxurious editions...academic collections supporting English departments should definitely invest in this volume" -- Library Journal --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks; Classic edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0590440160
• ISBN-13: 978-0590440165
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (164 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,153,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Influential, Extremely Memorable, February 2, 2004

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Invisible Man (Signet Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

On the surface, THE INVISIBLE MAN concerns a scientist named Griffin who has discovered the means to invisibility--but who has gone mad in the process. When frustrated in his efforts to restore himself to visibility, he determines to embark upon a reign of terror that will make him master of the world. It is worth noting, however, that Wells was very much a social writer and that his novels are inevitably commentaries on various social evils. Once you scratch the surface of THE INVISIBLE MAN you will find that it is very much a parable of class structure that dominated British life during the Victorian age: there are many "invisible men;" this particular one, however, is in a very literal situation.

And it is the literal situation from which the novel draws most of its power. Invisibility sounds attractive--but what if you were to actually become so? How would you cope with the ordinary details of every day life? Griffin does not cope well at all, and although Wells suggests that his madness have arisen from a number of sources, he also implies that it may arise from the fact of invisibility itself, again twisting the context back into the social criticism on which the novel seems based.

First published in 1897, THE INVISIBLE MAN is one of Wells earliest novels, and for all its charms it creaks a bit in terms of plot and structure. Some may disagree, but to my mind the most effective portion of the novel are the chapters in which Griffin relates his adventures to fellow scientist Kemp--but regardless of its flaws remains extremely influential and it has tremendous dash and style throughout. Short enough to be read in a single sitting, it is a quick and entertaining read and it is also quite witty in an underhanded, subversive sort of way. Extremely memorable!

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still interesting, November 1, 2009

By 

T. Simons (Columbia, SC United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Invisible Man (Kindle Edition)

First, this edition: it's reasonably well-formatted for a free ebook, with few typos, although the table of contents is not clickable; it clocks in at 1,841 "locations."

As to the story itself:

This is H.G. Wells' foundational science-fiction tale of a mad scientist who discovers a way to turn himself invisible. It's a masterfully told story that's been entertaining readers for roughly a hundred years, and I'd lay good odds you'll find it well worth the read.

What many readers might miss, though (I certainly did, my first time through) is that this isn't just a sci-fi potboiler; it's a modernization of the Platonic story of the Ring of Gyges. Beyond being a master storyteller, Wells was also an ardent philosopher and socialist, and like all of his other tales, there's a major political point here -- that morality derives from society -- and some additional minor political themes, like the plight of the urban poor.

Wells' genius here was to take the Platonic story of a Ring of Invisibility that inevitably led its wearer to commit injustice, and revitalize it in a modern context and in a way that made a sophisticated philosophical point.

Where Plato's Glaucon states:

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"For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice."
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Wells extrapolates to the present, not only making the story amenable to modern readers by substituting a scientific process for a magic ring, but also by building on Plato's point: not only does Wells' protagonist commit selfish injustice after selfish injustice, but his self-severance from society drives him into a murderous megalomania, and his end is quite the inverse of Plato's Gyges (who ended up king of Lydia and, supposedly, an ancestor of Croesus).

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A book that isn't what you would expect..., June 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Invisible Man (Tor Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

"The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells is not your standard sci/fi-horror novel. Wells wrote in a different era of time, and so uses a different style than what you might expect. The book begins in the village of Iping, and Wells does a masterful job of presenting each character with thier own style and the impact that Griffin/The invisible man has on them. In fact the entire first third of the book is almost a study in using dialog and mental asides for characterization. Then the novel shifts to Dr. Kemp and his relationship to Griffin - along with a healthy does of Griffin's account of his youth and scientific discoveries. Again Wells does a good job of explaining Griffin's temper and growing dementia. The conclusion of the novel depicts Griffin's final plunge into outright megalomania - spurred on in fact by his own genius and the reaction of others to his invisible condition. The book is a good read, but not without it (minor) flaws. If you are not into characterization, you will probably find the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the novel pretty uninteresting. If you are expecting excessive violence you will be dissappointed (only 2 persons die if I recall properly). In the end, this book is a very good example of the amount of detail a great author can heap into a small book. In our day and age of 'More Is Better' pop-hack authors like Eddings and Jordan, Wells still proves that with writing - size isn't important, it's how you use what you know. Wells squeezes more into 1 page than Jordan 'squeezes' into 100 pages.