In the Days of the Comet

What It's About

Willie Leadford is a young, embittered socialist worker whose life is consumed by poverty, class resentment, and a jealous obsession with Nettie, the young woman who has left him for another man. Driven by rage, he sets out after the couple with violence on his mind. Before events can play out, however, a passing comet brushes the Earth's atmosphere, releasing a strange green gas. Overnight, humanity is transformed: anger, greed, and irrational passion fall away, replaced by clarity, reason, and cooperation. The novel follows what happens to Willie, Nettie, and the wider world once "the Change" has taken hold.

Key Concepts

Written at the height of Wells's involvement with the Fabian Society, the novel is as much a vehicle for socialist and utopian ideas as it is a work of science fiction. The comet's gas serves as a plot device for asking a serious question: whether human vice is innate or simply a product of a flawed social and economic system. The book also caused some controversy on publication for its frank suggestion that a rational, transformed society would also reorganise sexual and romantic relationships along freer, less possessive lines.

About the Author

H. G. Wells was an English writer best known as one of the founding figures of modern science fiction. Alongside his fiction, he was deeply engaged with politics and social reform, and for a time was an active member of the Fabian Society, which shaped much of his utopian and speculative writing.