Abstract
H. G. Wells shaped a subsequent century of science fiction by popularizing and greatly expanding its often underrated satirical core: a combination of high seriousness and low adventure that could be called Menippean adventure writing. The most extreme critiques of extant human instrumental reason in Wells’s scientific romances are rooted in and function by way of its absurdity. Science fiction studies fails to note the importance of humor, satire, and parody in writers from Cavendish and Swift up through Wells, and such successors as Karel Čapek, Stanisław Lem, and Margaret Atwood. Bumptious Menippean satire is science fiction’s indispensable stock in trade.