Tales of Space and Time

About the book

The Crystal Egg and The Star open this collection with an enigmatic object and a cosmic disturbance, making familiar human surroundings answer to a larger universe. A Story of the Stone Age and A Story of the Days to Come then give extended space to imagined societies separated by enormous stretches of time. The Man Who Could Work Miracles closes the volume by placing extraordinary power in remarkably unprepared hands. Wells varies the length and scale of the pieces so that speculative invention can illuminate social arrangements as well as produce surprise. Practical needs, unequal power, and limited understanding persist even when the conditions of life change drastically. The collection encourages readers to ask which parts of human behaviour an astonishing invention might transform and which it would merely expose.

• Time and change
• Power and responsibility
• Human society

Why read it

For Wells's movement between brief thought experiments and longer visions of humanity's past and possible future.

Five speculative narratives · English text