In the Days of the Comet

As a great comet approaches Earth, a jealous young man pursues the woman who spurned him with murderous intent—until the comet’s strange green vapour envelops the world and, overnight, transforms human nature itself, sweeping away hatred, war, and pettiness. Wells fuses a tale of passion and violence with a utopian vision of humanity remade, using the cosmic ‘Change’ to imagine a world freed from its old cruelties. Idealistic and unusual among his darker prophecies, the novel blends personal drama with social dreaming. Thought-provoking and hopeful, In the Days of the Comet is Wells at his most visionary, asking what humanity might become if released from its worst instincts.