Tue 10 Nov 2009
Dan Stumpf Reviews TWO H. G. WELLS SF NOVELS.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[7] Comments
I’m still trying to figure out why H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (1898) works so well. Wells spends 30 pages building up to the obvious, radically shifts focus three times, and doesn’t ring in the nominal hero till it’s too late to care much about him.
Yet somehow we do. The last few chapters of Kemp besieged in his house by the Invisible Man make for good action and genuine suspense, which is agreeably true of the book as a whole. I just can’t figure out why.
I mean, there are all these words, paragraphs, pages and chapters where a mysterious stranger turns up hiding his face; there are uncanny noises, things move about, and all the while the astute critic ought to be saying, “Y’know the title of the book is like The Invisible Man … Hell-loool”
That the reader doesn’t say any such thing — this reader didn’t, anyway — tells me Wells may have been a more gifted story-teller than I realized.
And yup, he was. I’ve just finished reading The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and it seems H.G. really knew how to spin a yarn.
From the initial ship-wreck to the resolution on an Island Hell, this is the kind of writing that deserves to be called Crackerjack: piratical captains, mad doctors, chases, fights, monsters… and an undercurrent of thoughtfulness that reads like Jonathan Swift writing for the Pulps.
It’s nowhere near as scary as the movie they made from it back in the 30s, but it has stayed on my mind since I read it back in grade school, and I’m glad I revisited it.
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Editorial Comment: The spooky cover image for The Invisible Man came from a vintage paperback edition published by Pocket in 1957. The one for Dr. Moreau is a book club edition that contains both Wells’ book and Joseph Silva’s novelization of the American-International film that came out in 1977 (with Burt Lancaster, Michael York, Nigel Davenport, Barbara Carrera and Richard Basehart). Joseph Silva is often better known as Ron Goulart.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
A shame that Wells later seemed to have forgotten the importance of storytelling in his speculative work — at least at novel length. His early works combined thrills, storytelling, and ideas in a much more entertaining way than later tracts disguised as fiction.
He had more than a little trouble with the science of his Invisible Man, and never did reconcile the fact that a truly invisible man would be blind since his eyes could not refract light. A fact he wrote about to friends while he was working on the book. And since white clothing could have been made invisible he never quite explained why the character had to suffer so in his nudity in the English winter.
Hollywood was not quite as impressed with the novel as you (or I) and called on Philip Wylie and his novel The Murderer Invisible for some elements of the film (Wylie isn’t credited on screen, but did do the screenplay for the adaptation of Moreau with Charles Laughton as Moreau).
Moreau remains a powerful work, in some ways the most successful of Wells novels. It has haunted me since I read it when I was 13 and still does.
Steve
I always wondered if Goulart’s Joseph Silva was a nod to his friend Robert L. Fish and the Jose Da Silva novels he wrote.
The 1977 film is nothing on the Laughton version, but not a bad film. Do, however, avoid the awful Marlon Brando version though. That shouldn’t be foisted on anyone.
Dan
Your mention of the pulps reminded me of an entertaining pulp variation on Moreau, Edgar Rice Burroughs The Monster Men. Hardly in the same class as Moreau, but it has its moments.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Says Ron G. about Joseph Silva:
I knew Bob Fish and I’d read several of the books about his Brazilian detective.
However, my father’s full name was Jose Silveira Goulart . I used Jose Silvera (changing the spelling so that it was easier to pronounce) as the name of my galactic hack writer [who appeared in a series of several stories I wrote for F&SF].
Jose had (by the way, in Portuguese it’s a soft “J” — as in Disney’s Jose Carioca) two mottos — he’d write just about anything for money and he would go anywhere to collect money owed him.
When I was offered jobs that I thought even Con Steffanson and Frank S. Shawn wouldn’t touch — as I recall the first one was writing an Island Of Dr. Moreau novelization of a screen play for Ace Books–I thought it might be a perfect job for Jose Silvera.
However, I didn’t want to use exactly the name of my F&SF character. My dad had worked in a factory — for over 50 years — and one of his co-workers he often talked about was a chap named Joe Silva.
I thought that variation was okay. And so Joseph Silva began his career. Now I bet you’re sorry you asked.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Steve, Ron
Actually, not sorry I asked at all. Always interesting to know where pseudonyms come from, especially someone like Ron Goulart I’ve been reading since the sixties.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
David, have you ever read R C Sherriff’s autobiography NO LEADIN LADY? Written years after the event, he claimed that when he arrived in Hollywood, he was given a pile of previous scripts for THE INVISIBLE MAN. The studio head gave him a blank look when he asked for the original novel, and he had to search the entire city for an old second-hand copy.
According to Sherriff, he chucked away all of the previous scripts and started again. As far as he was concerned, the eventual film was based on his script, which was adapted from the novel. Sherriff’s name is the one on the finished film, and he is usually supposed to have written it. Now, was Wylie bought in to polish up Sherriff’s script, or was his script one of the ones that Sherriff threw away? I’d be really interested to know this, as I’ve heard Wylie’s name mentioned before in connection with the movie.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Bradstreet
My understanding was that Wylie was working at Universal at the time (he also wrote the script for the Laughton film Island of Lost Souls based on Moreau and Murders in the Zoo) and the studio found the story of The Invisible Man rather thin. Wylie had written the novel The Murderer Invisible whose villain is an ego driven madman with delusions of grandeur and a desire to conquer the world as well as take vengeance on society, and Wylie was asked to incorporate some of that into the script. IMDb lists him as uncredited on the script.
Whether he worked as a script doctor, and at what point he contributed I don’t know. It’s possible his script was one of the early ones Sherriff drew upon. Though he isn’t credited and The Murderer Invisible isn’t mentioned the parallels are pretty obvious when you read it, and some scenes have more to do with Wylie than Wells. Certainly the Wells novel is thin compared to the film story, though most of the Wells novel is used in the movie. The character of Griffin seems to owe a good deal more to Wylie’s book than Wells though.
It wasn’t unusual for writers to work on scripts uncredited. Max Brand was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood but his name appeared on few scripts, and F. Scott Fitzgerald worked on many scripts (Gone With the Wind included) that his name doesn’t appear on. On the other hand I’ve heard it suggested that the only thing William Faulkner contributed to the scripts he did with Howard Hawks was as the directors drinking buddy but still got screen credit.
Still, I have always read and been told that Wylie contributed to the script of The Invisible Man and that many of the plot elements were drawn from Wylie’s novel, and reading it that certainly seems likely, but it’s hard to tell and I don’t think Wylie ever said much more than he worked on the film.
Sherriff’s memory of the events could well be true and not contradict the Wylie contribution. He could well have been involved earlier or later. Meanwhile, next time you watch the film look closely and quickly for John Carradine phoning in a police report and Walter Brennan having his bike stolen. Wylie isn’t the only one uncredited in the film.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
David–
I devoured THE MONSTER MEN when I was 14 and re-read it again 40 years later with equal pleasure. Thanks for mentioning it.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Thanks, David. I don’t suppose that we’ll ever know the exact details of who wrote what. I doesn’t really matter, I suppose, but it doesn’t matter in a fascinating way.
I’ve always been fascinated by the way that the script for the movie JAWS works absolutely wonderfully, and yet was batted forth between several different writers (including Robert Shaw!). There wasn’t even a finished script by the time that they started shooting. You would never, ever guess this from watching the film.