Wells wrote five of his scientific romances that are on this site, all between 1895 and 1904. They are short, fast and strange, and they were written before he decided that fiction was a lesser use of his time.
The first four came out in four consecutive years and share a method: take one scientific idea, follow it to its social consequences, and stop before the explanation wears thin. The Time Machine is the purest of them, at about 32,000 words.
After 1898 he slowed down and widened out. The Food of the Gods, from 1904, is longer and angrier than the earlier books, and it is the one where the science is mostly a pretext for an argument about scale.
Where to start
The Time Machine — his first novel and the shortest thing here, so it costs you an evening and tells you at once whether you like his voice. The War of the Worlds is the one to read next.
H. G. Wells in publication order
Numbered by first publication. Word counts and reading times are for the text on this site.
| # | Year | Title | Words | Reading time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1895 | The Time Machine | 32,223 | 1.8 h | His first novel, 1895. |
| 2 | 1896 | The Island of Doctor Moreau | 46,593 | 2.6 h | 1896; the darkest of the early romances. |
| 3 | 1897 | The Invisible Man | 49,000 | 2.7 h | 1897. |
| 4 | 1898 | The War of the Worlds | 61,000 | 3.4 h | 1898; the Martian invasion. |
| 5 | 1904 | The Food of the Gods | 74,000 | 4.1 h | 1904; longer and more polemical. |
How to read H. G. Wells
- The four scientific romances. The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds, published 1895 to 1898. Read them in that order, which is also the order in which his ideas get darker.
- Shortest first. The Time Machine at about 32,000 words, then The Island of Doctor Moreau at roughly 47,000. The longest here is The Food of the Gods at 74,000.
- Science fiction as a tradition. Start with The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, then compare them with Frankenstein and the later scientific romances on the science fiction shelf.
Nothing here needs a series order. The only thing worth knowing is that The Food of the Gods is a different kind of book from the four before it: longer, more argumentative, and less interested in the adventure.
Every title above has a page here with chapter summaries, the word count, reading time, and free EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB files. H. G. Wells’s shelf · Science fiction classics · Gothic and horror classics — or go back to H. G. Wells for the full shelf.