The Invisible Man and The Food of the Gods (Wordsworth Classics)

The Invisible Man was, indeed, the classic I remembered and enjoyed. Food of the Gods, on the other hand, is an untidy and inconclusive piece of writing. Not H G at his best, which no doubt accounts for the fact that nobody I knew had heard of it. Slightly relevant in this age of designer babies and gene manipulation, but failing to make any real point. Discussed at a literary group I belong to, and all agreed that it was not impressive.Still, for the price, you do get The Invisible Man, which is well worth reading.

I had never read this book, although over the years, I've seen a few films 'based' on it. So, it was a shock to find that the main character, - the 'invisible man' - was not a nice person at all. This made the storyline quite gloomy, in my view, and while I can see how you could make a film out of it, by using artistic license to change the story, in its book form it's not a very nice tale to read. That said, it is a classic - so is worth a read, but it's not a book I'd read over & over again.

The Wordsworth Classics series is a great deal at £2.50 each with lots of notes and a thorough introduction.Easy to forget how good the original novels are from people like Wells, Jules Verne, Conan Doyle etc. Wells in particular has been plundered for years for films of very varying quality. Looking forward to the BBC doing War Of The Worlds set in the original locations and time period. Wonder why The Food Of The Gods hasn't been picked up on recently as it lends itself to a CGI-based treatment. As well as being a fascinating and often very funny story it has a lot of important points to make about society and the treatment of 'different' people.

A great book by one of the best authors

Good book and great service.

I bought and installed this, but it wouldnt connect to the developer's server so I could register it. According to Support it was an old version, and I need to download the latest version. As I have poor broadband I wanted to avoid this (5gb), which was why I bought the CD version. It looks like buying PC games via CD is dead.

This review is for the 2017 Wordsworth edition prepared by L. Dryden. The Invisible Man, as a famous Wellsian creation, is easily available to readers while The Food of the Gods, lesser known story among the vast amount of tales penned by Wells, is not so easy to come by yet it is a very remarkable story.In itself, as Dryden says in the introduction, artistically and structurally not as good as The Invisible Man, to me, is the realization of two human species that are projected in The Time Machine. A mad scientist creates a serum (in Dryden's word) or a refined "formula" to speed up growth. In the experimental farm, he hires an old couple to monitor the effect on chicks. And so the effect is felt pretty soon as there come along the over-sized chicks, over-sized rats and wasps. Mr Redwood, the scientist, even feeds his own baby with the formula and so his child grows to be at least 36 feet tall.But little Redwood is hardly a lonely soul with his own bigness. There are others who come along. When they decide to wage war on the little people, they are already under attack. The story ends with one of the giants vowing to secure their rightful place in the world.This two tales show exactly what make Wells such an influential writer: originality and freshness.