Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Widely regarded as the first science fiction novel.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is The Invisible Man about?
A stranger swathed in bandages takes rooms in a Sussex village inn, and the comedy of rural nosiness curdles into terror as Griffin — a brilliant, penniless researcher who has made himself invisible and cannot reverse it — slides from petty crime towards a self-declared Reign of Terror. Wells plays the premise with rigorous logic (an invisible man is naked, cold, and visible when it rains) and uses it to anatomise how power without accountability corrupts. The ending, with Griffin beaten to death by a mob, restores visibility and pathos in the same stroke.
Why it matters
The definitive treatment of invisibility and a keystone of the mad-scientist tradition. James Whale's 1933 film made it a horror icon.
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From the Earth to the Moon
The founding text of spaceflight fiction, cited as inspiration by rocketry pioneers Tsiolkovsky, Goddard and Oberth.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
A cornerstone of the lost-world subgenre, influencing Doyle, Burroughs and a century of hollow-earth tales.