If Wells's optimism faded in old age, as his mind came to the end of its tether, there had always been a streak of pessimism in his work. His imagination was darker than his reason and sometimes stronger. Lodge has Anthony West suggest that his father's best work "was essentially pessimistic. It was inspired by ideas like entropy, the randomness of evolution, the innate folly and vanity of mankind, the possible ways in which the world could end or  human civilisation be wiped out [...] I think it all became too much for H.G. in the end, the evidence of the power of evil in the world, mocking his belief in Progress". The folly and vanity of mankind: Original Sin?

We come back to the famous quarrel with Henry James, whom Wells lampooned in his novel Boon. This is as it should be, not only because Lodge has already written a novel in similar style about James. Essentially each came to believe, after years of friendship, that the other had followed the wrong track. For Wells, James had retreated from the world into the Ivory Tower of Art, writing books of refined subtlety about very little; he was like an elephant hunting out and catching what proved to be only a pea. For James, Wells had betrayed his remarkable talent by abandoning Art for what was essentially journalism. There was some justice in each man's argument, but James survives while much of Wells's vast output is withered and of at best historical interest. Art is news that stays news; journalism news that is dead tomorrow. The old tag holds good: ars longa, vita brevis.