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Title: Men Like Gods by H. G. Wells ISBN: 0-7551-0413-7 Publisher: House of Stratus Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: Another Misguided Utopia
Comment: I like Wells' SF books. This one has a SF aspect to it, but it is primarily a work of social philosophy. British travelers are accidently transported into another dimension, where human beings live a life of productive labor, sociability (no one is too introspective), lack of private property, and almost complete nudity. According to Wells, this is paradise, and people here are not much different from Gods. It turns out that in this dimension, civilization had taken almost exactly the same course as it did on our Earth. The differences are superficial. Then at some point during the industrial age, a great transformation began to take place. Over the course of a hundred or so generations, private property in all but personal things was abolished, there were no more sexual preditors, and people have become open with strangers in their thoughts and actions. They have also become much taller, stronger, much more beautiful and intelligent.

This utopia relies on the Lamarckian misconception of biological evolution, where acquired improvements are transmitted to the next generation, culminating in a generation of God-like human beings. It also relies on the misconception that private property is at the root of societal evils and that people would want to get rid of it for good.

Rating: 4
Summary: a bit of a revelation...
Comment: If all you've read of Wells is The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, you're not getting the full story. This novel--writen some twenty-five years after the aforementioned works--shows the author's more philosophical side; there's less of the straight SF romance aspect to it; it's also, in my estimation, a considerably more gripping read.

In short, it's about a group of people who are inadvertantly drawn into an alternate dimension, which turns out to be a paradisiacal version of Earth thousands of years in ahead of contemporary society. There's some action involved, but it's more a book of moral philosophy than anything else, as it explores issues of what humanity should be and be striving for. I liked it a lot, and you should try to find a copy and read it.