In the Days of the Comet

A man stands on a cliff with a rifle, preparing to murder his ex-lover and her new aristocratic husband. This is the opening of H.G. Wells's startling utopian novel, first published in 1906. William Hammond is a working-class socialist in the seaside town of Clayton, bitter at the class system that has denied him the woman he loves. When Nettie runs off with a wealthy man, Willie decides on murder-suicide. But then a great comet fills the sky, and its luminous green tail brushes Earth, releasing a strange gas that sends everyone into a profound sleep. When Willie awakens, he finds himself thinking with terrible clarity for the first time in his life. The green gas has transformed humanity, stripping away the resentments and violence that once defined it. The war with Germany ceases. Class war dissolves. Wells asks a question that still haunts us: can human nature truly be changed, or do we simply wait for the next comet to save us from ourselves? A utopian fantasy that reads like a prayer for a better world, written on the eve of the century that would test that hope most brutally.