Books: All Brains, Little Heart

H. G. WELLS: HIS TURBULENT LIFE AND TIMES by Lovat Dickson. 330 pages. Atheneum. $10.

It is hard to remember H. G. Wells except as a caricature. He looms as a kind of cartoon figurehead on the prow of the 20th century—plump and cheerful, goggle-eyed with confidence, breasting a sea labeled Progress.

Alas, the marvels of science so relished by Wells have produced far less than Utopia. Lovat Dickson, formerly an editor and director of Macmillan and Co., Wells' London publisher, cannot quite forgive the man who blithely sold the masses on the future....

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