There's not much to say about Well's The Invisible Man that would add to Anne's review on Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/user/show/1720620-anne. I almost died laughing.
I started listening this because Wil Wheaton started performing it as part of his Radio Free Burrito podcast. I enjoyed his unedited raw performance. Unfortunately, as of January 2021, he seems to have stopped on chapter 10 and I grew impatient to finish. Folks can find the first 10 chapters on his site here: www.radiofreeburrito.com/
I have a confession to make, I am not the largest fan of H.G. Wells. I enjoyed "The Time Machine" and "The First Men On The Moon" immensely, but really didn't enjoy "The War of The Worlds", feeling that it just kept running on and on and on... (feeling not unlike Tolkien syndrome). So I came to "The Invisible Man" with a bit of trepidation, knowing that for me the story could go either way. Goodreads reviews are mixed, some people still enjoying the classic tale, and others feeling that the story did not age well.
The outline of the story is well known. A scientist devises a way to make himself invisible, realises it's not quite what he expected, and then goes on a reign of terror. The main story is relatively pedestrian, his arrival at a small village, robbery of the local vicarage and then the escalation of …
I have a confession to make, I am not the largest fan of H.G. Wells. I enjoyed "The Time Machine" and "The First Men On The Moon" immensely, but really didn't enjoy "The War of The Worlds", feeling that it just kept running on and on and on... (feeling not unlike Tolkien syndrome). So I came to "The Invisible Man" with a bit of trepidation, knowing that for me the story could go either way. Goodreads reviews are mixed, some people still enjoying the classic tale, and others feeling that the story did not age well.
The outline of the story is well known. A scientist devises a way to make himself invisible, realises it's not quite what he expected, and then goes on a reign of terror. The main story is relatively pedestrian, his arrival at a small village, robbery of the local vicarage and then the escalation of his situation.
For me, the highlight of the story is towards the end of the novel, where the invisible man discusses how he made himself invisible and his early escapades in London. The science-fictional detail Wells goes in to is impressive, describing how he devised a process to de-pigment the blood and quite a detailed description of optical density, refraction and reflection. And this presents an air of believability - with this level of background the process appears quite believable. The limitations of invisibility are discussed, eating leaves food visible and the grime of London sticks to his body, hence his escape to the country.
And it holds. Reading this story in 2012, it was still a believable science-fiction story that holds up well today. Wells intended it to be part horror - the horror of the invisible man, and the horror of his deeds, and the last few chapters attempt to capture a horror-like atmosphere. This doesn't quite hold up as well now, it tends to take more than a man that can't been seen killing an individual person to really shock or scare today. The invisible man's reign of terror is neither very terrifying, nor a particularly long reign.
But overall, this held together well. A genuine classic of the genre, and one that's still worth reading now.
