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Star-Begotten (Serapis Classics)Overlay E-Book Reader

Star-Begotten (Serapis Classics)

H. G. Wells

E-Book (EPUB)
2017 Serapis Classics
117 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-96255-965-6

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Kurztext / Annotation
Star Begotten is a 1937 novel by H. G. Wells. It tells the story of a series of men who conjecture upon the possibility of the human race being altered, by genetic modification, by Martians to replace their own dying planet. The book readdresses the idea of the existence of Martians, which Wells had written about in The War of the Worlds (1898). The dialogue of Star Begotten makes brief references to Wells's earlier novel, referring to it as having been written by 'Jules Verne, Conan Doyle, one of those fellows'.

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II. - MR. JOSEPH DAVIS LEARNS ABOUT COSMIC RAYS

 

 


1

The Planetarium Club abounds in unexpected conversations. It has a core of scientific men who are mostly devotees of the exact sciences, grave, shy, precise men, but wrapped round them are layers of biologists, engineers, explorers, civil servants, patent lawyers, criminologists, writers, even an artist or so. Almost any subject may be started in the smoking-room where most of the talk goes on, but the feeling against chewed newspaper is strong. Mr. Davis, as he ascended the club steps, made an effort to throw off those vague shadows that oppressed his mind, and to brighten his bearing to the quality that may be reasonably expected of a temperamental optimist.

But as he recrossed the hall from the vestiary to the dining-room he was still undecided whether he should sit at one of the small tables and go on with his state of uneasy deterioration, or take a place at one of the sociable boards. He elected for solitude, but repented as soon as his decision was made, and after his solitary lunch he made a real effort at sociability and joined a talking circle of a dozen men or more between the window and the fire, sitting down next to Foxfield, that hairy, untidy biologist, for whom he had a slightly condescending liking. The talk was rather under the stress of a new member, a parliamentary barrister, who might be almost anything in a few years' time and manifestly felt as much. This man had been elected before it was realized that he was slightly larger than any one else in the club and disposed to behave accordingly, and his conversational method was rather an elucidatory cross-examination than an original contribution to the interchanges.

'Tell me,' he would say and even point a ringer. 'I don't know anything about these things. Tell me-'

'Tell me,' except in the case of monarchs, heirs apparent, and presidents of the United States, is by the standards of the Planetarium atrocious conversational manners. But so far no one in the club had been able to get this point of view over to the new-comer: It would happen sooner or later but so far it had not happened. He was talking now with an air of making out some sort of case against modern physics and demonstrating how entirely more sensible and practical a mind which had passed through the ennobling exercises of Greats and a straightforward legal and political training could be.

'Atoms and force were good enough for Lucretius and they were good enough for my stinks master when I was a boy. Then suddenly you have to disturb all that. There's wonderful discoveries, and the ak is full of electrons and neutrons and positons.'

'Positrons,' a voice corrected.

'It's all the same to us. Positrons. And photons and protons and deutrons. Alpha rays and Beta rays and Gamma rays and X rays and Y rays. And they fly about like solar systems and all the rest of it. And the dear old Universe that used to be fixed and stable begins to expand and contract-like God playing a concertina. Tell me-frankly. I suggest to you-it's a bluff. It's something out of nothing. It's just a way of selling us mystery bottles with scientific labels. I ask you.'

He paused with the air of a man who has put a poser.

A small, elderly, but still acutely acid old gentleman was sitting deep in one of the armchairs. The finger had not challenged him, but now he put out a lean hand and spoke with a thin penetrating voice, like a rapier, with the faint glint of a Scotch accent along the edge.

'You say Tell me-and Tell me. Will you have the grace to listen while I tell ye? And not interrupt?'

And when the slightly outsize member made as if he had something further to say, the old gentleman just raised his hand and said: 'No. Listen, I tell ye, and told you shall be.'

The rising man, just faintly abashed, assumed an attitude of sc