D&D General Settings of Hope vs Settings of Despair

[Hussar]

I don't think I would characterize either writer so simply. The quintessential Wells story for me is, "The Food of the Gods". And while the food is the cause of enormous problems, try reading the end of that story and telling me that Wells is critical of the idea of progress. Heck, not even his more well known "The Time Machine" has that ending.

By contrast consider Verne's "The Purchase of the North Pole".

In SF criticism, these are the terms used to characterize the divide. I have zero interest in yet another pedantic quibbling about terminology. You clearly understand the point that is being made and apparently have no particular issue with the point that there is a divide in SF between the two styles. Why not actually address the point being made instead of spending a bunch of time trying to redefine commonly understood terms?

 

[Hussar]

And, just to add later.

Just because a work or two by a particular author may not fit the concept perfectly isn't really much of a counter argument. The two main streams (or schools if you prefer) of SF are Vernian and Wellsian. The Vernian school is characterized by a view of science as progress and is particularly exemplified by works by Jules Verne like Around the World in 80 Days, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, and, of course, probably the best example, From the Earth to the Moon.

Conversely, while later Wells works may have softened his stance on the dangers of science, the school of literature that is named for him, is exemplified best by War of the Worlds as well as other works.

I am very well aware that not every single work by each author can be neatly categorized like this. Which means that some of Verne's works would be characterized as Wellsian and some of Wells' works would be characterized as Vernian.

Now, hopefully that makes it clear what I'm talking about. I am in no way trying to claim that all of Verne's works fall under a single theme. That would be a silly thing to claim and at no point did I even hint that that would be true. My apparent mistake, I guess, was presuming that people would either know enough about literary criticism of SF to simply accept the commonly used terms, or, if they didn't have the background, could actually ask for clarification instead of immediately trying to tell me how wrong I am.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Wells was writing about social issues, the science fiction was simply a vehicle for that. So War of the Worlds is about colonialism, The Time Machine is about class division etc. No more is the different more evident than in traveling to the Moon. Verne attempts a realistic method (including the acceleration issue that Wells cheerfully ignored in WotW) and finds the Moon barren. Whereas Wells gets his protagonists to the Moon by a method indistinguishable from magic, to tells another allegory about the evils of colonialism.