Two Quotes

HG Wells, in describing his proposed World State to be based on the dictates of his atheist, Darwinian worldview, said this:

To the multiplying rejected of the white and yellow civilisations there will have been added a vast proportion of the black and brown races, and collectively those masses will propound the general question, “What will you do with us, we hundreds of millions who cannot keep pace with you?”

HG Wells and the famed writer Joseph Conrad struck up a friendship, which, at least from external signs, seemed to have cooled after 1906 or so. In early 1918, Joseph Conrad would explain that his final quarrel with Wells had centered on their differing views about humanity:

“The difference between us, Wells, is fundamental. You don’t care for humanity but think they are to be improved. I love humanity but know they are not!”

Would that more men had the insight of Conrad, or lacked the deadly and impious pride of Wells.

Out of the Silent Planet closely copies an H. G. Wells novel in its plot, but it couldn’t be more anti-Wellsian in its themes. As a boy, Lewis had enjoyed stories by Wells (1866-1946), especially such classics as War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. But when Wells evolved from a science fiction writer to an amateur philosopher, which he did around the turn of the century, Lewis lamented that Wells had “sold his birthright for a pot of message.”