NEW NOVEL BY WELLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 15, 17 July 1937, Page 24

NEW NOVEL BY WELLS

Many years ago, in "The War of the Worlds," H. d. Wells proved himself an unpleasantly accurate prophet; for those gracious Martians of his materialised later in the tanks and other implements of scientific warfare which devastated civilisation i:i 1914. The Martians in that story invaded our world in a pretty terrifying sort of way, but in "Star Begotten," Iha latest novel from the pen of the same author, the Martian assault takes on the aspect of peaceful penetration for the most benevolent of purposes. He calls his story a "biological fantasia," and in the course of its pages there is typically Wellsian speculation.

The scientific basis of the new dream is not too easily comprehensible to the lay reader. The Martians, it seems, are firing cosmic rays into the chromosomes that determine variations in the human type. They are thereby causing more and more births on this planet that depart from the normal, whether in the form of mere freaks or in the form of extraordinary intelligences. It is the latter result that they are aiming at, in order to improve the human race to a point at which it will become a superhumanity. Vastly superior beings themselves, they are pursuing a policy of beneficent imperialism. Such is the disturbing idea that occurs to Mr. Joseph Davis, the Tory historian, when listening to the speculations of scientists at his club. It takes firm hold of him, and explains many things, among them the oddity of his own wife, who never quite fits into the ordinary scheme, arid his conviction that the child she is about to bear him will prove an altogether unusual infant. But in this short book Mr. Wells does*not pursue the human side of his fable very far. He has some barbed satire about the way in which the popular Press greets the new discovery; but on the whole he is more concerned to sketch the kind of character and ideals that the Martian invaders may be expected to manifest. These Martians are the old Utopians familiar to readers of H. G. Wells, destined to effect a radical transformation in human life, both individual and social. The steps by which this transformation will be achieved are not very clearly sketched, but at any rate Weils is very eloquent, as usual, about the power, happiness, and beauty of his transfigured humanity. The Martians, however, seem to have human failings and are not above murdering dictators.