Suntup Editions - The H.G. Wells Trilogy "The War of the Worlds" , "The Time Machine", "The Invisible Man" Signed Limited Edition, Matching Numbered Set No. 71 of 250 [Very Fine]

The H.G. Wells Trilogy in a Matching Numbers Set by Suntup Editions

"The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells. The Numbered edition is a quarter cloth binding with custom designed paper boards, which are printed letterpress. The spine is covered in a vibrant two-toned cloth and endsheets are Hahnemühle Bugra. The edition is housed in a paper covered slipcase and is limited to 250 copies.

"The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells. The Numbered edition is a quarter cloth binding with custom designed paper boards, which are printed letterpress. The spine is covered in a two-toned cloth and endsheets are Hahnemühle Ingress. The edition is housed in a paper covered slipcase and is limited to 250 copies.

"The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells. The Numbered edition is a quarter cloth binding with custom designed paper boards, which are printed letterpress. The spine is covered in a two-toned cloth and endsheets are Hahnemühle Ingress. The edition is housed in a paper covered slipcase and is limited to 250 copies.

Three volume set in one shipment: 

1. "The War of the Worlds" Signed Limited Edition No. 71 of 250.  Personally signed by Orson Scott Card and Florian Bertmer

2. "The Time Machine" Signed Limited Edition No. 71 of 250.  Personally signed by Simon Wells and Florian Bertmer 

3. "The Invisible Man" Signed Limited Edition No. 71 of 250.  Personally signed by Christopher Priest and Florian Bertmer

About The Time Machine

Considered the greatest science-fiction novel of all time, The Time Machine is a seminal moment in the history of English literature. A dazzling display of new thought that has been endlessly copied since its release in 1895, its title alone – a phrase coined by Wells as a device for traveling backwards or forwards through time – has become part of the cultural lexicon. When an English Scientist, known only as The Time Traveller, invents a machine that can travel through time, he finds himself in a distant future inhabited by a mellow race of humans called the Eloi. The Time Traveller will soon discover, however, that they are not the only race left on Earth. The Time Machine remains one of the most important novels of the 19th century.

The Time Machine will mark the first in a three-book set of H.G. Wells novels. Originality was Wells’s calling card. The author’s ability to, as historian John Higgs notes “create wholly original stories out of thin air” culminated in a three-year span in which he produced three of his most influential works; what Wells referred to as “scientific romance novels.” The Time Machine, followed by The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds are editions uniquely crafted and designed to breathe new life into some of the greatest stories ever told. Additionally, each book includes special curated bonus material to create a truly unique set of these beloved novels.

The Time Machine features an exclusive introduction by Simon Wells, great-grandson of H.G. Wells, and director of the 2002 film adaptation. The edition includes “The Chronic Argonauts,” an 1888 short story by H.G. Wells which the author refers to as, “the original draft of what became The Time Machine.” Also included is the long-lost eleventh chapter, “The Grey Man,” published during the novel’s serialization in the January to May issues of The New Review, excised from the first book edition published later that year.

SIGNED NUMBERED EDITION (No. 71)

• Signed by Simon Wells and Florian Bertmer.
• 6” x 9” trim size.
• Rounded smyth-sewn binding.
• Quarter cloth binding with custom designed paper boards printed letterpress.
• Two-hits stamping on spine.
• Introduction by Simon Wells, great-grandson of H.G. Wells, and director of the 2002 film adaptation.
• Six ink illustrations by Florian Bertmer printed letterpress along with the text.
• Hahnemühle Bugra endpapers.
• Printed letterpress on Mohawk Via paper.
• Two color printing on title page.
• Housed in a custom designed paper covered slipcase.
• Limited to 250 copies. 

About The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells. Originally serialized in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man to whom the title refers is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and who invents a way to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it neither absorbs nor reflects light. He carries out this procedure on himself and renders himself invisible, but fails in his attempt to reverse it. A practitioner of random and irresponsible violence, Griffin has become an iconic character in horror fiction.

While its predecessors, The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau, were written using first-person narrators, Wells adopts a third-person objective point of view in The Invisible Man. The novel is considered influential, and helped establish Wells as the "father of science fiction".

SIGNED NUMBERED EDITION (No. 71)

• Signed by Christopher Priest and Florian Bertmer.
• 6” x 9” trim size.
• Rounded smyth-sewn binding.
• Quarter cloth binding with custom designed paper boards printed letterpress.
• Introduction by Christopher Priest.
• Six ink illustrations by Florian Bertmer printed letterpress along with the text.
• Hahnemühle Bugra endpapers.
• Printed letterpress on Mohawk Via paper.
• Two color printing on title page.
• Housed in a custom designed paper covered slipcase.
• Limited to 250 copies.

BONUS MATERIAL

Appendix A: The Four Endings of The Invisible Man – The four different versions of Chapter 28’s conclusive words originally intended to be the last paragraph of the book.

Appendix B: Invisibility in Ancient Greece and in Nineteenth-Century Fiction – Exclusive excerpts from a collection of invisibility narratives that inspired H.G. Wells’s novel.

Appendix C: Technological Context: Röntgen Rays and Radio Waves – A valuable collection of articles that served as scientific inspiration for H.G. Wells’s novel.

About The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by Pearson's Magazine in the UK and by Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The novel's first appearance in hardcover was in 1898 from publisher William Heinemann of London. Written between 1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between mankind and an extra-terrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of both an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and of his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.

The plot has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British imperialism, and generally Victorian superstitions, fears, and prejudices. Wells said that the plot arose from a discussion with his brother Frank about the catastrophic effect of the British on indigenous Tasmanians. What would happen, he wondered, if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the Tasmanians? At the time of publication, it was classified as a scientific romance, like Wells's earlier novel The Time Machine.

The War of the Worlds has been both popular (having never been out of print) and influential, spawning half a dozen feature films, radio dramas, a record album, various comic book adaptations, a number of television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It was most memorably dramatised in a 1938 radio programme directed by and starring Orson Welles that allegedly caused public panic among listeners who did not know the Martian invasion was fictional. The novel has even influenced the work of scientists, notably Robert H. Goddard, who, inspired by the book, helped develop both the liquid-fuelled rocket and multistage rocket, which resulted in the Apollo 11 Moon landing 71 years later.

SIGNED NUMBERED EDITION (No. 71)

• Signed by Orson Scott Card and Florian Bertmer.
• 6” x 9” trim size.
• Rounded smyth-sewn binding.
• Quarter cloth binding with custom designed paper boards printed letterpress.
• Introduction by Orson Scott Card.
• Six ink illustrations by Florian Bertmer printed letterpress along with the text.
• Hahnemühle Bugra endpapers.
• Printed letterpress on Mohawk Via paper.
• Two color printing on title page.
• Housed in a custom designed paper covered slipcase.
• Limited to 250 copies.

INCLUDES 112 PAGE BONUS MATERIAL BOOKLET

The Crystal Egg – Precursor to The War of the Worlds
The Things That Live on Mars by H.G. Wells – Cosmopolitan Article
Orson Welles 1938 Radio Broadcast Script
Reprint of The Boston Daily Globe’s front page headline
Reproductions of 32 famous Henrique Alvim Corrêa drawings
Art from Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds

About the author

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 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. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback.

During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction". 

Wells rendered his works convincing by instilling commonplace detail alongside a single extraordinary assumption – dubbed “Wells's law” – leading Joseph Conrad to hail him in 1898 as "O Realist of the Fantastic!". His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898) and the military science fiction The War in the Air (1907). Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.

Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context.[9] He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist. Novels such as Kipps and The History of Mr Polly, which describe lower-middle-class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. Wells was a diabetic and co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (known today as Diabetes UK) in 1934.