Customer Reviews

The Invisible Man (Apple Classics)

5 star:		(69)
4 star:		(59)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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

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).

"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.

This is a absolutely wonderful book that can be read quickly, maybe even in one sitting. It is told in the first person by an observer who knows the invisible man and is appalled by the transformation that is taking place as both drugs and power corrupt his acquaintence's mind.

What is so fun about this book is the pace: you really feel like you are there. It is all realistically imagined, down to the slowness of the undigested food that can still be seen in the invisible's man stomach. This makes the book far better sci-fi than the films, with the possible exception of the one with Claude Rains, which is the best one and the closest to the original novel by far.

In addition to Mary SHelley and Jules Verne, Wells helped to set the standard for all hard sci-fi that followed. Thus, if you like sci-fi as literature, this is a MUST read. But if you want a really fun read, this is also good for that.

Warmly recommended.

Roughly a century ago, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne virtually created the Science Fiction novel. In a period of less than 4 years, Wells wrote three seminal classics of the genre: The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). The Invisible Man, which owes an obvious debt to Frankenstein, is based on one of the eternal themes of mankind and one of the perennial themes of Science Fiction. First, it explores the nature of man by asking whether an invisible man would still be bound by normal morality. Second, it develops the theme of science as a two edged sword; after initially conveying great power, scientific innovation turns on its wielder, driving him mad. One hundred years later, this ambivalence about technology and scientific progress has remained a central part of our culture.

As in all of the best books of the genre he helped to create, Wells combines these speculations with an exciting, fanciful tale. He and Verne truly set their successors a lofty standard to aspire towards.

GRADE: A-

First off, the book is amazing--taut, tantalizing and fast-moving. The protagonist is . . . fascinatingly horrible. I really don't want to reveal more. It was fun for me because I knew so little about what was going to happen!

Wells does a masterful job of leading the plot through several points of view. Some parts you see happen before you, some you only hear about and some you can only guess at. It leaves the reader wanting more until the very unexpected, very horrifying end.

Now, as for this edition, I found it very meddlesome and cantankerous. The footnotes took particular pleasure in pointing out every mistake Wells made, whether with the timeline or in describing events. It was frustrating to read, as I didn't dare skip the notes because some of them were necessary to get definitions of words we are not familiar with today.

So, yes, read this book. Please. But no, don't get this version. Got it? Good!

The invisible man tells the story of a man who invents an invisible serum which not only affects his personal life, but also his mental state. The book overall is very discriptive. It containd so much eloquence and scientific backround you may think that the serum is real. The sence of realism and scientific explanation creates a story so pulse pounding you will not put it down. Probably the main strength of the invisible man is the personal life of Griffin, the scientist that invented the serum, he did not have a joyfull childhood, and he did not have a good life overall, though he is a man of great brilliance, so once he became invisible his life went to an all time low. He is in the nude in mid london, he does not have much money, he is very much frustrated. He then becomes a tad violent and mentally unstable at times; and due to that he cause a discord in an inn in the rural london that makes him a n infamous beast, and ofcourse london is at a peak of terror. Well if you were mentaly unstable , invisible, and everyone is afraid of you ofcourse you would go.......... well...........nuts. to find out more read the book.

H.G. Wells was a prolific Victorian English author who is best remembered today by four novels written in a three year period early in his career: "The Time Machine" (1895), "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1896), "The Invisible Man" (1897) and "War of the Worlds" (1898). He was writing "The Invisible Man" at the same time he was working on "War of the Worlds" which came out just a few months later. According to one commentator, a common characteristic of all four novels, and the secret of their success, is their graphic violence contrasted with the innocence of their settings.

Wells was not the first to write of invisibility, other works from the 19th century include Gui de Maupassant's "Le Horla" and American novelist Fitz-James O'Brien "What Was It?". However it was Well's who created the mythological character that is immediately recognizable to anyone who has never even read the book. The invisible man, Griffith, is partly a mad scientist in the tradition of Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll dabbling in the mysterious arts, and partly a warning about the dangers and fears of science to an innocent public which was seeing dramatic change brought on by scientific advances.

The first part of the novel is fairly light-hearted with the invisible man seemingly a sad victim of his fate trying to hide his true nature and scorned by society, and even dogs. But then he begins to commit petty crimes, even gleefully taunting those around him - and then he designs to go on a "reign of terror" - similar to Frankenstein who was born innocent, but taught by those around him who saw only the fearsome and loathsome, he lives up to his reputation and becomes the evil which others "see" (or don't). His creation of invisibility is an innocent act, but it is man reaction and use of that invention that leads to evil.

"The Invisible Man" can also be contrasted with the English 'Invasion Literature' genre that was popular at the time ("War of the Worlds" is invasion literature canon). Similar to "Dracula" (1897) which played on the fears of a foreign invasion of the "dark" Eastern Europeans, "The Invisible Man" was a "Stranger" (the title of the first chapter), invading the otherwise peaceful confines of a quiet and normal English village.

A mysterious stranger cloaked in bandages arrives in a sleepy town only to be discovered as invisible. This magical discovery breeds distrust and fear among the town's residents, while further isolating the invisible man from society and driving him mad with envy and loneliness.

It is easy to imagine the impact this short novel had during the 1890's, but it holds no surprises for the modern reader. The theme and plot developments have been done so many times that all original impact is lost to new readers. The writing is not particularly good and there is not much character development. What you are left with is an appreciation for how this book influenced generations of authors and movie makers.

Although the plot does not hold the readers attention as it must have when it was written, the commentary on the affects of human behavior when shunned and isolated from society is very much relevant today. As an outcast the invisible man's loneliness and fear of society destroys his empathy and he seeks solace in the only thing that makes him feel alive: hatred and revenge. I could not read this transformation without thinking about the recent violence in the schools by displaced teenagers. Could they be today's invisible man?

The impact may be lost, but the commentary and influence are very much felt today. For that at least it deserves a reading.

THE INVISABLE MAN BY H.g. Wells is a great book that any one 9 and older would enjoy. It all begins on a cold December night and a blizzard just struck a quiet English country village. A train also arrived and a strange looking man got off. His name was Griffin. He was wearing a long heavy coat, he had bandages all over his face and the only thing you could see was his nose, dark glass, gloves, and a hat. When he got off he started going towards town. He fought his way through the storm and came across a hotel. So he got his room, he had tons of boxes full of things. Little did the hotel keeper know this short tempered man would cause this town more trouble then it could handle. Slowly the small town realizes there is something different about Mr. Griffin then meets the eye.

Mr. Griffin is a scientist who found a way to become invisible and it has gone to his head. He is trying to terrorize every one and overpower the small town and will kill anyone in his way. Griffin was not always this way once he was a scientist who was working on medicine and graduated top of his class. Then he switched his studies. He found out how to make a human transparent. My favorite part is when the town gets together and searches for the invisible man. They use attack dogs and lock their doors so the invisible man has no where to stay, and nothing to eat, but that doesn't stop him.

All in all this is a great book that you should read.