From The Asylum Library: H. G. Wells

I'm officially starting the rumor Wells was a vampire. Dig those eyes.

Every now and again, as is true of most motion picture studios, The Asylum will look toward the world of letters for inspiration. The public domain offers an array of spectacular, action-packed, thrilling, and - most importantly - free works ripe for the updating. In this occasional column, I'll take a look at the literary giants from which The Asylum has borrowed. Today, we look at the man responsible for two Asylum films to date (the second one less-so, but I'll explain...), as well as the man who is often credited, alongside Jules Verne (the O.G.), as the creator of science-fiction, Mr. Herbert George Wells, known to history as simply, H.G.


H.G. was born in Kent, England in September 1866 to a gardener and his wife. Times were lean in the Well's household, but young H.G. was an aggressive reader, and through books acquired the knowledge and skills that would elevate him out of his humble beginnings and into the eternal literary canon.

Though he also wrote in the areas of history (including the three-volume magnum opus The Outline of History), politics, social commentary and mainstream fiction, it's H.G.'s science fiction he is most remembered for. His early novels read like a roster in the sci-fi hall of fame: The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau, When the Sleeper Wakes, The War of the Worlds and The First Men in The Moon. A political socialist, Wells also wrote a number of what he deemed "Utopia novels," in which he applied his political views to a reorganization of society, leading to a (often deceptively) more perfect future; notables in this category include A Modern Utopia and The Shape of Things to Come.

To date, the works of H.G. Wells have been adapted into more than 80 films and television series and episodes over the last 110 years, by everyone from Georges Melies to Alexander Korda to George Pal to Bert I. Gordon to Steven Spielberg to David Michael Latt, who directed War of the Worlds for The Asylum in 2005, the same year Spielberg's adaptation came out (and largely credited for launching the "mockbuster" phenomenon). The other Asylum film based on the works of Wells, and this is the one I referred to as "less-so," is War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, naturally, and while not based on any actual Wells' text - his story has no sequel - it's based on characters inspired by a situation in Wells' novel, and that's close enough for me.


So there you have it, a cursory and haphazardly-researched look into the life and writing of on H.G. Wells, godfather of sci-fi and inspiration for two Asylum films to date. As for the future, who knows? I for one would loooooove to see an Asylum Island of Doctor Moreau, or a loose adaptation of First Men on the Moon, substituting perhaps the Red Planet, Mars. Until then, enjoy yourself a healthy heaping of Wells, Asylum-style, with the best double feature in the studio's catalogue (in the sci-fi genre, at least).