Tono-Bungay (Modern Library Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Everything you want in Wells
Review: "Tono-Bungay" is an alleged tonic with dubious medical benefits; and the story is one of the brief fortunes of someone who manages to turn the worthless substance into a formidable fortune - for a while. By the time Wells wrote this novel he had already written books which might or might not be science fiction (witness "The War in the Air") and, all in all, "Ton-Bungay" probably isn't science fiction. But I should mention a substance called "quup" which is introduced towards the end of the book. (I'm not giving anything important away.) "Quup" is the first mention I know of of what we would now call radioactive waste, except that it's naturally occurring, and ... well, perhaps I should be discrete, but I can say that the scenes involving quup have a peculiar flavour which writers would find impossible to capture nowadays.

So you get an excellent double deal with this book: the best of Wells's social fiction of the 1910s, plus a dollop the fresh science fiction he wrote the previous century.

Rating:
Summary: Social-Fiction, not Science-Fiction
Review: Having read H.G. Wells' classics WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, THE TIME MACHINE, and THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, I looked forward to reading what is often claimed to be his "best" work. TONO-BUNGAY is completely different than any of his Sci-Fi classics. TONO-BUNGAY is more of a study of class structure and class struggle in England during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The story follows the life of a young man, George, and his Uncle Edward. Edward invents an elixir called TONO-BUNGAY and hires his nephew George to help build the company. As the book goes George and Edward become quite wealthy. Throughout the book George makes numerous comments on his varying places on the social ladder. It seems that no matter how wealthy George becomes, he will never be accepted in certain circles because he is newly rich and not "old money." The story is well written and is generally easy to follow. I would, however, recomm! end the World's Classics edition of this book (published by Oxford U. Press and available from Amazon.Com) because there are some instances in which Wells makes comments about European literature, art, languages, colleges and phrases that may be of little meaning to the average reader, but for the six pages of end notes provided in the World's Classics edition. The World's Classics edition also claims to be the most accurate edition of the story, taking into account all of Wells' revisions of the story, many of which were made after the book was initially published in 1909 (TONO-BUNGAY was revised by Wells and re-released in 1925).