“The Invisible Man” is getting a lot of attention these days. 

The novel was written by H.G. Wells in 1897. The movie starring Elisabeth Moss and directed by Leigh Whannell just came out. Whannell took Wells’ original idea of a man who can make himself invisible, along with the advantages it would give him, and created a contemporary adaption for the #MeToo generation.

If you want the original science fiction story, pick up the novel. 

A stranger staggers into the Coach and Horses during a February snowstorm and takes a room. He’s covered head to toe in hat and coat; his face obscured by glasses and bandages. The proprietress, Mrs. Hall, assumes he has had an accident or operation of some sort, which elicits her sympathy. 

He tells her he came to the southern English village of Iping to work in solitude and he does not wish to be disturbed. Once his luggage comes in and he commences with his “really very urgent and necessary investigations,” observant folks at the Coach and Horses can hear all matter of mutterings from the stranger closed up in his rooms. But it’s the times that they catch him unawares that are truly shocking: he seems to be missing parts of his face and other anatomy. One man swears the stranger has no arm but can’t explain what holds up his sleeve. 

Then the quiet village of Iping is stunned by a burglary at – of all places – the vicarage! Other strange things follow the burglary, each one more fantastic and unexplainable than the last. 

The whole time, the stranger’s behavior becomes more and more eccentric, turning Mrs. Hall’s sympathy into ire when the stranger puts off paying his bill. She confronts him point-blank about the debt which leads to the jaw-dropping revelation that the man is … totally … invisible!

The best science fiction combines the impossible with the everyday – and H.G. Wells captures that in this story.

Wells took a fantastical premise – a man who is totally invisible – and followed that concept into reality. How would invisibility work and what caused it? How would the man function? How would he get from one place to another? How would the elements affect him? And, most importantly, how would invisibility affect his mind? 

“My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do,” said the Invisible Man.

One of the terrifying aspects of this story is the fact no one ever knows when the Invisible Man is right beside them. Wells plays on everyone’s fears of knowing something is there, but not being able to see it. He also captures the hysteria of what happens when that fear takes hold of people and what it makes them do. 

Wells really does earn his title of “father of science fiction” but you can see the roots of the horror genre, as well. He’s adept at social commentary and the psychology of stress.

Wells’ style of writing and dialogue are a bit antiquated so the story probably won’t flow as smoothly for modern readers as a contemporary novel, but “The Invisible Man” is worth a read as a study of human nature and what people are capable of doing when they think they’re cunning enough to not be caught. 

If the name H.G. Wells rings a bell, it should. In addition to “The Invisible Man,” Wells wrote numerous science fiction classics such as “The Time Machine” (1895), “The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and “The War of the Worlds,” (1898) which was made into a radio broadcast in 1938 that raised wide-spread panic because people thought Martians were really invading. For more information, look up H.G. Wells.