H. G. Wells epub The Undying Fire

H G Wells (1866-1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography, and even two books of recreational war games. He is best remembered now for his science fiction novels including The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898), but during his own lifetime he was most prominent as a forward-looking social critic and from an early date was an outspoken socialist. The Undying Fire, first published in 1919, is a modern retelling of the story of Job. Like the Book of Job, it consists of a prologue, an exchange of speeches with four visitors, a dialogue between the protagonist and God, and an epilogue in which the protagonist's fortunes are restored. The story opens with the central character, schoolmaster Job Huss, beset by severe misfortunes with regard to his school and his health, and the news that his son has been shot down over the German lines. He is visited by members of the schoolboard intent on dismissing him from his headmastership, their names echoing those of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar in the Book of Job. However, Huss resists leaving his school and engages in a series of philosophical disputations that reflect theological views that Wells developed in his earlier work God the Invisible King (1917). His physician, in the role of Elihu, sympathises with some of Huss's views but contests others. While Huss is anaesthetised for surgery he converses with God who tells him his troubles will be overcome if he has courage. As a paean to education the book anticipates the series of textbooks on history, biology and economics that Wells was about to undertake.