The Invisible Man

By William Schlichter and H. G. Wells

The Invisible Man is a classic study in psychological horror and chaos that will give you chills and asks the scientific question, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

This edition contains a special introduction by horror and science fiction author William Schlichter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BHC Press/Signature
• Release date: Jan 17, 2017
• ISBN: 1946006386

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The Invisible Man

Foreword copyright © 2017 BHC Press

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by

Signature

an imprint of BHC Press

Library of Congress Control Number:

2017931250

Digital edition ISBN numbers:

ISBN-13: 978-1-946006-46-2

ISBN-10: 1-946006-46-7

Visit the publisher at:

www.bhcpress.com

Cover, interior book design, and eBook design

by Blue Harvest Creative

www.blueharvestcreative.com

Two approaches to a book Foreword are the academic or the inspirational. Academia should be full of facts, reasons and comparisons as to why the texts fit neatly to acceptable literary standards. I’ve toiled for a long time speaking about how science fiction is underrated as a perfect literary device. In its purest form, it is a safe genre to discuss political and social issues people oftentimes dance around in the mainstream. Armed with such an argument, I wanted to explore science fiction literature to earn a Master’s degree. I was informed such a study was not academic enough.

Heartbroken, I decided the degree was not a worthy endeavor and returned to writing novels and teaching the classics in high school English. I found value in the dead white male canon—nothing sparked a student’s interest like an action/adventure with laser beams. Now over twenty years later I have seen a shift in reading and an acceptance toward the study of science fiction as an academic pursuit and as a way to get youth to return to reading books.

In no way do I want to dampen their desire to read by some long boring academic study of H.G. Wells. He is far from the first exposure a young reader, or even a movie watcher, has to the genre today. He remains the foundation with his stories enjoyed and retold 120 years later. Authors have gone far to include the time traveling narrator in their own tales as H.G. Wells could only create such unfathomable fantastic visions of the future by having traveled through Time himself. Maybe in a device of his own creation, or maybe even in a blue police box. I doubt there is any truth in these tales, but what is fact is H.G. Wells has permanently cemented himself as the father of modern science fiction with his scientific romances.

Science fiction and horror were never blessed by the scholars of literature. My own attempts at writing a thesis on the topic was rejected. As it just wasn’t literature. It seems an impossible belief that H.G. Wells was a proponent of socialism, feminism, nationalism and the advancement of science. All of which deserve study. All of which are foundations in the genre. It has always been a medium to discuss social issues. How can the major works of a person who earned four nominations for the Nobel Prize in literature not be scholarly? The major classic themes of science fiction are established by H.G. Wells.

My own exposure to the science fiction genre came in 1977 with my first viewing of Star Wars. I knew from then on I had a single goal. No, it wasn’t to be a Jedi or even race among the stars. It was to write. I wanted to create such fantastic worlds as Luke visited.

Since I saw Star Wars long before it was A New Hope and before I could even read, it would be a few years before I would read H.G. Wells. But he was one of the first literary exposures to science fiction I recall. War of the Worlds and The Time Machine stand out above all the rest. I know I learned Martians died from the common cold and humans in the dark turned into monsters. When I did achieve my higher education goal, I wrote my full-length feature film script with a dystopian setting.

Harkened back to the original, terrifying reality world in which our time traveler rescues Weena from the Morlocks and the horrors hidden behind the illusion of the perfect world. I was never scared of vampires or werewolves, and despite the terrifying ending of the Original Planet of the Apes, I was one of those rare people who had little fear except in the true monsters in our culture—our fellow human. H.G. Wells may have expressed the need for social change through The Invisible Man, but what struck me first before any analysis of the text is the monster behind the tale is a human.

Not like a human, or was once human, or close to human but a person—a living person—and that reality is terrifying. The second horror is when scientific advancements are allowed without regulation. Scientific knowledge was important to H.G. Wells. He had a background in biology. Which gave him an understanding of germs. His use of the common cold as a weapon remains revolutionary.

H.G. Wells was a proponent of social change. Surprisingly, he was a stout socialist and pushed for social change in his stories, a now classic use of science fiction. What better way to discuss an issue like race than to use aliens? H.G. Wells didn’t touch on racism, but he did express methods to destroy the social order in his fiction. His Darwinism views and his socialist beliefs are evident in the ways The Invisible Man wants to disrupt society. He is willing to steal, burn and murder to achieve his rule over a town.

I did not learn or understand the author and his deeper references explored in the text; instead, my first-time reading was for enjoyment. I try not to deconstruct the work on the first read. That comes later with more reading and study of what others think of the text.

Growing up I didn’t consider the deeper social commentary. I did grasp how power corrupts and science left unchecked leads to destruction, and as I reexamine this text now I return to the basic elements that drew me to the work in the first place. Never did I want to be a Jedi or fight Martians. I wanted to create those worlds, and now as an experienced adult (I use adult loosely) writer, I understand the need for layer in the story to appeal to all levels of readers, but sometimes the simplest layer is the best.

The dream to be invisible and what we would do if we could open a truly terrifying side of our human nature.

The story of a man who can become invisible, terrorizes people and escapes unseen remains terrifying even by today’s horror standards. Wells, who wanted his science and stories to remain in the reign of credibility, allows his novels to hold up today against current scientific advances, which makes the invisible man scarier than mythical vampires or werewolves. The invisible man seems to play more on the mind.

People leave keys on a shelf and then question if that is the spot where they left them. With a known invisible entity around, the mind races more. And questions who is around. What about people who claim to see him and then he is not around?

Vampires leave behind traces of blood or lack of. Werewolves leave the body of a victim, but a person never knows if they are visited by the invisible man. A book might be moved and who is to say you forgot you moved it. The sheer psychology begs the question was he here or not? Worse, the did it move or not element that also naturally plays in our heads when we are alone. The ramifications go beyond the childhood terror of monsters under the bed and back to there are no monsters only man. He’s not an inhuman monster but a human in its true form. And one we can’t see.

The scholar in me wants to explore the morality in the play. It could have a deeper meaning in that we all don’t want to be invisible. There is nothing worse than being alone in a crowded room. I tend to think if there’s a deeper message it’s how ultimate power destroys a person. One of the oldest of moral tales explored. The invisible man has the power to take whatever he wants. Steal. Even murder as he proclaims. I’m not sure what the scientific advancement invisibility has in benefiting mankind, but it certainly reveals how ultimate power destroys a person.

The lesson may be that no matter how incredible a scientific advancement may be, it will always be corrupted by those in power. Lacking money for rent, robberies occur. And lacking a medial value, invisibility would be used solely with military application as an invisible person can travel anywhere unseen, and he does kill unseen. Our protagonist is no hero, and not even an anti-hero. He is simply lost and being invisible has no chance to recover.

So instead of a scholarly pursuit into the literary value the childhood reader in me who felt the man unseen in the closet was terrifying, I invite you to read or reread H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man and not to second-guess when you find the book on the desk when you swear you left it on the nightstand.

William Schlichter,

Author of Sci-Fi and Horror

The past is the beginning

of the beginning and

all that is and has been

is but the twilight of the dawn.

~ H.G. Wells ~

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the Coach and Horses more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. A fire, he cried, in the name of human charity! A room and a fire! He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn.

Mrs. Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare him a meal with her own hands. A guest to stop at Iping in the wintertime was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who was no haggler, and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her good fortune. As soon as the bacon was well under way, and Millie, her lymphatic maid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses into the parlour and began to lay them with the utmost eclat. Although the fire was burning up briskly, she was surprised to see that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with his back to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard. His gloved hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost in thought. She noticed that the melting snow that still sprinkled his shoulders dripped upon her carpet. Can I take your hat and coat, sir? she said, and give them a good dry in the kitchen?

No, he said without turning.

She was not sure she had heard him, and was about to repeat her question.

He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. I prefer to keep them on, he said with emphasis, and she noticed that he wore big blue spectacles with sidelights, and had a bush side-whisker over his coat-collar that completely hid his cheeks and face.

Very well, sir, she said. "As you like. In a bit the room will be warmer."

He made no answer, and had turned his face away from her again, and Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed, laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out of the room. When she returned he was still standing there, like a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. She put down the eggs and bacon with considerable emphasis, and called rather than said to him, Your lunch is served, sir.

Thank you, he said at the same time, and did not stir until she was closing the door. Then he swung round and approached the table with a certain eager quickness.

As she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated at regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a spoon being rapidly whisked round a basin. That girl! she said. There! I clean forgot it. It’s her being so long! And while she herself finished mixing the mustard, she gave Millie a few verbal stabs for her excessive slowness. She had cooked the ham and eggs, laid the table, and done everything, while Millie (help indeed!) had only succeeded in delaying the mustard. And him a new guest and wanting to stay! Then she filled the mustard pot, and, putting it with a certain stateliness upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried it into the parlour.

She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a white object disappearing behind the table. It would seem he was picking something from the floor. She rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off and put over a chair in front of the fire, and a pair of wet boots threatened rust to her steel fender. She went to these things resolutely. I suppose I may have them to dry now, she said in a voice that brooked no denial.

Leave the hat, said her visitor, in a muffled voice, and turning she saw he had raised his head and was sitting and looking at her.

For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak.

He held a white cloth—it was a serviette he had brought with him—over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled voice. But it was not that which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white bandage, and that another