H.G. Wells

In Brief: Criterion Collection’s “Island of Lost Souls” DVD

Image courtesy of Criterion Collection What is the Law? Law No More! There are a couple of ways I watch Erle Kenton’s 1932 Island of Lost Souls film classic. One, which is the most successful, is as a snapshot of…
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Georges Méliès and the Dawn of Cinema

Before we subscribed to Netflix a couple of years ago, it had been decades since I had seen a complete version of Georges Méliès’ influential La Voyage dans la lune, also known as A Trip to the Moon (1902). The short…
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History’s Stylus Remains Stuck in the Same Groove

The 2016 presidential election seems the most contentious of my lifetime. The amount of cognitive dissonance and outright hypocrisy among supporters of the front runners is, well, staggering.  My fellow Americans seem unable or unwilling to shake off the shackles…
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The German Military Connections of Rudolf the Victorious in H.G. Wells’s “Things to Come”

In the mid 1930’s, noted writer, historian, and social commentator H.G. Wells, among the world’s most famous men of letters of the day, teamed up with producer Alexander Korda and director William Cameron Menzies to produce what would become the…
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‘War,’ Panic and a One-Hour Broadcast: A Short Study

(Originally published in Trendline Magazine, November 2000, updated April 2015) ‘FAKE RADIO WAR STIRS TERROR THROUGH U.S.,” or so went the headline on Halloween day 1938. The previous evening, a 23 year old Orson Welles brought the famous H.G. Wells…
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