H. G. Wells 18: A Family Elopement

[@markstevens7147]

Well said Greg. I'm not religious but I think "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and "Judge not lest thee be judged" are wise counsel. Glad to hear a voice of moderation in these polarised, finger-pointing times.

[@telltalebooks]

Thank you.

[@omgdouglaslucas]

I've enjoyed the handful of H.G. Wells novels I've read: The War of the Worlds; The Time Machine; The Invisible Man. Looking forward to reading his short stories someday, so I'm glad you held up the complete short stories book so I could take a mental snapshot of the cover in case I ever see it at a bookstore. As far as his views on marriage and romantic relationships, an interesting datum is of course the moment in The War of the Worlds where the protagonist and his wife re-encounter each other and just look at each other uneasily, a strange moment that was included in the Tom Cruise movie version. People have debated for a long time what to make of the odd interaction. They don't rush to hug each other or anything. As far as the accusations against Neil Gaiman, I agree with y'all's approach of reading and discussing the texts, with author bio and societal context as part of the deal. I was thinking also, there's a potential science fiction connection since you mentioned digging into these issues more in the future. A transparent justice system has two stages. First, there's a public accusation; second, a trial to figure out innocence or guilt. I think a lot of people understandably, even correctly in some instances, lost faith in stage #2 in our current world, esp. when accusations had been made against very powerful people and just got accusers in trouble, and no justice. So more emphasis in the past decade or so has been placed on stage #1: if you can't get justice from the judicial courts, try the court of public opinion or try ensuring consequences such as loss of employment or loss of certain international travel/visa rights, etc. But that won't work forever, for reasons you point out - as just one example, lots of actually innocent people have been death penalty'd due to error or malevolence. So that must mean reforming or building a replacement for stage #2, i.e., creating a better judicial system, one that people can understand and trust and even recommend to each other. Maybe that's where science fiction could come in, to explore alternatives or thought experiments. I searched Clute's online SF Encyclopedia for phrases like "justice system" and "law" and didn't see any entries :\ Most works that come to my mind are pessimistic iones like stories about pre-crime predictive policing and the like. Which is good too, but maybe there are some more optimistic ones out there somewhere.

[@telltalebooks]

Interesting thoughts. The problem with the court of public opinion is that it is opinion and very rarely based on much fact. Many things tend to become exaggerated and distorted. Any justice system must be based on presentation of hard fact. Difficult to do, especially if there is any corruption in the system. There are a lot of science fiction stories about future justice, with A Clockwork Orange probably the most famous, but it’s as you say, very pessimistic. It would be interesting to find some more positive thought experiments. The trouble with the justice system ultimately is the insistence that there should be a set of rules that everyone must conform to. Sure some things are easy like not killing, but from there we walk a fine line between preserving freedom and allowing people to be different and maintaining the laws, which tell everyone that this one way is the way everyone has to act and think.