All three of these novels have come to be dominated by later adaptations: films, radio broadcasts, television series, film remakes. Returning to the source material, I am struck by how interesting it is to think of these novels as visions of the future from the point of view of the end of the 19th century. Read this way, The Time Machine is a cautionary tale about the class struggle and War of the Worlds (like Ray Bradbury's later Martian Chronicles) is a criticism of colonialism. The Invisible Man is maybe the most peculiar: so much of the novel seems wrapped up in the slapstick comedy of the situation, it's only in the last third that the story's real subversion becomes apparent: the Invisible Man is an honest to goodness villain. Add them up, and Wells's notions about his country's future (and it still goes without saying for Wells that England's future is the future of all Mankind) is, at best, frighteningly uncertain. ( )