The abuse of scientific genius is a major theme throughout Wells's novels.

In The Island of Dr. Moreau, Wells portrays a scientist who abuses animals in his obsessive pursuit of knowledge; in The First Men in the Moon a character's discovery of extraterrestrial life causes him to turn against the human race.

Even the Martian invaders in The War of the Worlds can be seen as the evolutionary consequence of an arrogant, amoral pursuit of scientific knowledge. Wells emphasizes that scientific knowledge untempered by strong ethical constraints is self-destructive, and destructive of the human spirit, the natural world, and human society.

Dozens of motion pictures and television shows have used the motif of a man or woman becoming invisible. All owe their inspiration to Wells's novel and to the first important motion picture adaptation, Universal's The Invisible Man (1933). This black-and-white film, featuring special effects...