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Men Like Gods (Collins Classics) Paperback – November 10, 2020

by H. G. Wells (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 222 ratings
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Welcome to Utopia.

When Mr. Barnstaple, an Earthling, is accidentally transported to Utopia with a group of others, he begins an adventure that will change how he views the world forever.

Utopia has no government. Utopia has no religion. People are governed only by their own conscience and desires, and Barnstaple is drawn into what he sees as a perfect society. But when a disease brought by the Earthlings threatens the existence of the Utopians, Barnstaple must make a choice: take over Utopia, or betray his own people to save a world he has grown to admire…

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  1. Print length
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    November 10, 2020
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  6. ISBN-10
    0008403481
  7. ISBN-13
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About the Author

H. G. Wells was a prolific author and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. He is best remembered for his science fiction novels, and is considered a founding father of the genre. His most notable works include The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds. He died in 1946.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Collins (November 10, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0008403481
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0008403485
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.25 x 0.75 x 7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 222 ratings

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H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells

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The son of a professional cricketer and a lady's maid, H. G. Wells (1866-1946) served apprenticeships as a draper and a chemist's assistant before winning a scholarship to the prestigious Normal School of Science in London. While he is best remembered for his groundbreaking science fiction novels, including The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Doctor Moreau, Wells also wrote extensively on politics and social matters and was one of the foremost public intellectuals of his day.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
222 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

David Gordon Walters
5.0 out of 5 stars Men Like Gods: a novel that deserves to be better known
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2024
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First published in 1923, Men Like Gods is one of H. G. Wells's less well known science fiction novels. It deserves to be better known than it is. The plot concerns two groups of people who unexpectedly find themselves transported to Utopia, a planet in a parallel universe. Utopia, as the name suggests, is a utopian world, inhabited by telepathic people who have become so advanced that they have abolished most forms of private property and who operate without any system of government. We see the consequences, partly comic and partly tragic, that result from the interactions between the people of Utopia and humans from our world. Men Like Gods is very well written, reasonably witty, and much better than one can easily convey in a brief description.
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King Harkinian
4.0 out of 5 stars A great, fictional work for a tenuous world.
Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2022
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H. G. Wells wanted great things for this world. There was some image he held against ours that gave him the impetus to attempt to reform our age and to write of his many works regarding that whole thing. You could say that Men Like Gods encapsulates that image. Indeed, the main character isn't much far off from H. G. Wells himself. Mr. Barnstaple/H.G.Wells feels silly beside himself, like a fish out of water, and in the biblical slaying words of the time, like the apostle Paul, after visiting heaven, he didn't want to return to home and felt that he belonged to a better world that had been longing for, for so long.

H. G. Wells shared with us a dream that must have self perpetuated an unhappy state of mind for him that would have been difficult to escape from. On the one hand, H. G. Wells is bombarded by the stark contrasts of man's infinite potential, and what mankind ended up doing with their potential instead.

It is in this book that the reader gets a very intimate close look on what he had in mind when it came to securing the future of the homo sapien.
He paints a vivid picture of the potential Utopia that could eventually come. Or rather, Mr. Barnstable, the main character, is immersed in the middle of just the beginning of man's leap to the stars.
3 people found this helpful
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Michael Valdivielso
5.0 out of 5 stars More realistic than some of his utopias...
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2010
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You end up in a new world - because of magic or hypnosis or some kind of accident. You learn about the native lifestyle and come back to your normal world, wiser, with knowledge to help all mankind.
Boring, seen in a hundred other books. But this is slightly different. Slightly more realistic than even some of Mr. Wells' own versions of utopia.
Because in this one the Earthlings bring illness and evil ideas to Eden. Yes, the flawed Earthlings bring death and destruction to Utopia and what are the goodie-goodie natives going to do about it?
I also love how Wells hints at the fact that while the people of utopia are well meaning and nice, they do seem to treat the Earthlings as lower creatures. After all they ARE Superior. By the end of the book, in fact, only the flawed or the very young show any interest in the main character from Earth. They have moved beyond us, to the point where even some of the ideas they have do not translate, and they see us as early examples of flawed humans. Like we may look at a pet ape.
Unlike his work,  A Modern Utopia (Forgotten Books) , this just feels more realistic and, sometimes, even has a touch of humor. This is just how people would act if they were dropped into a utopia. Sad to say I feel this hits our soul and ideals, or lack of them, right on the nose.
Enjoy!
9 people found this helpful
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A Christy
3.0 out of 5 stars Uncommon and Worth the Read
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2009
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Almost everyone knows of H. G. Wells' other works like The Time Machine, but this book, never as popular and certainly mentally deeper, is really the way to get a look into this renowned author's mind.

As another has mentioned, this isn't so much a high science romance but rather a story that incorporates social philosophy. It is a social philosophy almost entirely 180 degrees out from my own. And just to get it out and over with, yes; there are a lot of misconceptions regarding evolution, biology and science. To enjoy the story, it is necessary to make the same exceptions for those misconceptions as we happily make for errors regarding electricity while reading Frankenstein.

Our main character is what we would refer to as a typical middle class working stiff. He suffers the same discontentment that many today do with children growing up not exactly the way we would wish for them, a spouse that is less than exciting after all these years, a boss he doesn't respect and a job he detests going to. Sound familiar? An impromptu holiday winds up quickly as an accidental push into a sort of parallel dimension with all the others who traveled the road near the same time. Their cars simply wind up in a new place after a bit of a jolt.

In this new place, the people are all perfectly formed, beautiful, supremely intelligent and telepathic. The story, which I won't ruin further by detailing, revolves around the inevitable clash of the "modern" human in a place that has eschewed all the things we consider worthwhile and made themselves infinitly superior. Needless to say, our hero develops the appropriate appreciation and awe and eventually returns home a different man. Should I detail further, I will certainly ruin the action that isn't at all sparse in the story.

I'll admit that I was very surprised by the book. I had pictured the author in different ways, as far as his ideas and opinions, but never like this. This is the socialist and communist dream made manifest. Of course, the problem with that delves down into our deepest pre-history and evolution but he couldn't know that. As primates who "collected" as our evolutionary advantage, we can no more leave behind the desire for personal property and the safety of objects than our need for oxygen to fuel our bodily processes. It is part and parcel of who we are.

The largely unspoken, but occassionally obvious use of eugenics and denial of parentage to achieve these aims is a bit frightening and may be difficult for modern sensibilities, but it was an openly discussed topic during that era and should be considered in that light.

Reading this book is a great idea for anyone who has an interest in H. G. Wells and his marvelous works because it does help to round out his viewpoints in other works. It's also a less P.C. work that allows a reader to pause and think of their own opinions as the story moves along and various philosophical points are brought to light by the action.
11 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Ana
5.0 out of 5 stars libro excelente
Reviewed in Spain on January 14, 2022
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Para mi, HG Wells es un genio. Un hombre muy sabio y capable de ver el futuro. Este librito es como una puerta abierta mostrando un destino posible para el ser humano, la evolucion en positivo (cuando se lee entre las lineas)...al menos que los que estan tratando de destruirnos en estos momentos no logren a hacerlo antes....
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Pascal
4.0 out of 5 stars A great book by Wells
Reviewed in Canada on January 3, 2019
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This was a good and refreshing read, a great addition and bringing its uniqueness to the sci-fi genre.
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Angiewren
5.0 out of 5 stars Ahead of his time.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2017
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Its the first HG Wells book I've read. I enjoy sci fi. But like most things they are surpassed by our predecessors imagination. Stick with it and enjoy
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G. A. Reeves
3.0 out of 5 stars Readable Edition of Didactic Wells Fantasy
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 27, 2017
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Wells's best scientific romances were written in the last years of the nineteenth century, brilliantly pessimistic tales to terrorize readers, with a degree of realism never seen before - and rarely since. No one would have believed, in those early days of his career, that Wells would settle down to write such tame scientific fantasies as In the Days of the Comet and Men Like Gods.

Although Men Like Gods is more readable than his 'straight' utopia, A Modern Utopia (from 1905), the plot is hardly gripping; like The Food of the Gods, it begins fairly promisingly but ends rather drably. Here, you are initially interested in how exactly the earthlings of the present/past are going to mess things up; however, the implications of what they eventually do hardly create much excitement for the reader. The overall sense on finishing the book is of Wells wagging his finger and muttering 'I told you so. You damned fools.'

That said, I am very glad that Dover have produced this inexpensive and decent-size-print edition.
2 people found this helpful
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Bookworm
5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Wells.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 14, 2014
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Another classic if somewhat obscure H G Wells.

This novel deserves to be read with his more more famous works.
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