H.G. Wells was a great author born in the Victorian Era. The science fiction novels written by him are still read even after the passage of more than a century of their composition. You find the futuristic technology in his novels, which was not discovered during his era.

But, a significant aspect that we find in his novels is the depiction of the negative traits of technology. These facets resemble a lot with gothic fiction, which is entirely based on these negative traits. The people believing in the Goth subculture wear the dark-colored goth clothing, which is the perfect example in this regard. Interestingly, the period of the novels of H.G. Wells and the gothic novels is same, so acquiring each other’s influence was quite obvious.

Wells wrote a number of novels, among which we can take “The War of the Worlds” and “The Time Machine” as the best examples, in which the negative traits have been depicted. “The War of the Worlds”, talks about the attack of the Martians from Mars to earth. They attack  earth through their fighting machines carrying the chemical weapons and heat rays.

These things symbolize the human’s growing interest in the war weapons. Surprisingly, the aforementioned war weapons (except fighting machines), were used in the world wars, which took place after some years of writing the novels.

On the other, this negative impact has been displayed in the form of human’s devolution in the “The Time Machine”. As the name itself suggests, it is the novel that is based on the concept of time travel. The time traveler goes for his journey to the future.

He reaches 802701 A.D. and finds that the human has been changed into two species – Morlocks and Elois. Morlocks are the working class, but they eat Elois in return of their work. This shocking devolution may be the result of the negative impact of technology.

We can witness in the novel that the intellect of the people of that era is like a 5-year old child of the time traveler’s time, i.e., Victorian Era. Moreover, it has also been depicted in the novel that the inventor travels towards 30 million years from his own time and finds that the earth is dying. All these depictions may be the author’s fear about the negative impacts of humanity.

These things seem identical to the gothic fictions; however, it is different from that in the fact that it does not show the supernatural creatures. But, we can find little supernatural elements in the form of Martians and Morlocks. The novels of the authors like H.G. Wells gave birth to a new fashion trend, which we know as steampunk fashion today. Similarly, gothic shirts, pants, shorts and skirts are inspired by Goth fiction.