H. G. Wells & the Bicycle

THE TITLE of Jeremy Withers's study refers to two books by Wells written at around the same time but hugely different in their genre and content, The Wheels of Chance and The War of the Worlds. The Wheels of Chance is a comic novel in which a downtrodden shopworker on vacation is enabled to achieve temporary fulfilment thanks to his bicycle (which gives him physical mobility) and classless cycling costume (social mobility). In contrast, Wells's science fiction masterpiece The War of the Worlds shows earthlings scurrying ineffectually around on primitive two-wheeled machines while Martian invaders stride over them in futuristic tripods, diminishing the bicycle to a passing stage in the history of transportation, one fated to be superseded by more advanced technology.

The juxtaposition of the two novels gives a good idea of the scope of Withers's book, which looks at positive and negative depictions of the bicycle across an impressive range of Wells's writings. Withers notes that both of these stories were written during the cycling boom of 1895–1898, when Wells himself had become an enthusiastic cyclist. Withers has read widely in and around the period, so is able to discuss Wells's depictions of the bicycle using contemporary sources as well as the work of later scholars. However, the study is far more wide-ranging than a mere placement of Wells's work in its historical context. It delivers a systematic investigation of the changing role played by the bicycle in Wells's fiction, traces how HG's allegiance eventually shifts to the automobile, and considers the relevance of Wells's views on transport, not only to his own era but to ours.

The idea of the bicycle as a liberating force is recycled (I use the term advisedly) in Kipps and The History of Mr. Polly. These may be obvious texts to examine, but Withers goes far beyond the obvious in his responses to them, questioning the ideology behind the supposedly socialist cycle business run by Kipps's friend Sid Pornick and examining the relationship between Alfred Polly's cycling and his fantasising. Many of the best insights in Withers's book, however, come from science fiction, a branch of Wells's writing where the presence of the bicycle is easily overlooked.

Take "The Land Ironclads." This 1903 short story is remembered for its groundbreaking depiction of military vehicles resembling tanks. Its depiction of bicycles has largely been ignored, even by the original illustrator, yet Withers shows that Wells's concept of a tank attack requires a follow-up wave of cyclists to secure territory and take prisoners. The tank's armoured firepower and the bicycle's mobility make them interdependent parts of a greater war machine. Against the objection that Wells is overestimating the importance of the bicycle in warfare, Withers decisively cites the significant contribution of cyclist-soldiers to the Boer War, the two World Wars, and the war in Vietnam.

The scientific romance which yields the most references to cycling is The War in the Air, the tale of a former bicycle dealer, Bert Smallways, who is caught up in a catastrophic German air attack on the United States, which precipitates world war and ultimately the destruction of civilization. Withers argues that the bicycle is central to this novel because Wells uses it as a norm against which more sophisticated forms of transport can be measured. Motorcycles, cars, trains and, above all, aircraft are agents of "hypermobility." They move too far too fast and generate negative consequences. These include complex repair needs, planned obsolescence, traffic jams, and ultimately wars, since modern transport brings different societies into abrupt contact with one another, precipitating conflict and permitting aerial warfare and bombing.

As his discussion progresses, however, Withers has to concede that even the bicycle is tainted by some negative consequences. While it may be the norm against which other vehicles are measured, it is also the underlying model for many of them, and...