The Door in the Wall by H. G. Wells Episode #103
H. G. Wells | September 22, 2023-
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The Door in the Wall by H. G. Wells Episode #103
H. G. Wells
THE DOOR IN THE WALL
Episode #103 · Written by H. G. Wells · Narrated by Scott Miller
There are moments that ask for no preparation, only consent. In The Door in the Wall, H. G. Wells presents a man who remembers such a moment from childhood and keeps encountering it again, unchanged, while everything else in his life moves forward.
The door does not intrude. It waits. Each time it appears, the timing is inconvenient, even irresponsible. Career, reputation, and obligation all demand precedence. Passing it by feels sensible. Passing it by also begins to feel permanent.
What gives this story its power is restraint. Wells avoids spectacle and explanation. The focus stays on the weight of delay and the quiet cost of choosing what is expected over what is deeply felt. The door never argues its case. The man must decide whether postponement is the same thing as refusal.
This is a story about success lived at full speed, and a single unresolved moment that refuses to be outrun.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
H. G. Wells published The Door in the Wall in 1906, between major novels that defined his reputation, including The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). While those works established him as a central figure in speculative fiction, Wells also produced a substantial body of short stories for magazines such as The Country of the Blind and Other Stories and The New Machiavelli.
This story reflects a different strain of his work—one concerned with memory, choice, and private reckoning rather than invention. It remains one of his most enduring short pieces because it places the burden of meaning not on explanation, but on what a person repeatedly decides not to do.
LISTEN TO THE STORY
Listen to The Door in the Wall by H. G. Wells — a vintage science fiction short story where a lifelong choice keeps returning, asking to be taken seriously.
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H. G. WELLS SHORT STORIES
Few writers stand at the true beginning of classic science fiction the way H. G. Wells does.
Before rockets filled magazine covers and robots stalked chrome cities, Wells was already tearing holes in reality. He sent men tumbling into parallel dimensions, opened doors to lost childhood Edens, hurled wandering stars toward Earth, and let ordinary shopkeepers toy with godlike power. His stories feel startlingly modern, yet they carry the sharp Victorian edge of a writer who understood both scientific possibility and human frailty.
On The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast we’ve explored the astonishing breadth of his shorter fiction. In The Star, a rogue celestial body drifts toward Earth, and the quiet calculations of astronomers collide with the terror of a watching world. The Crystal Egg offers a glimpse across space itself, peering toward Mars through an object no one fully understands. The Plattner Story thrusts a chemistry teacher into an inverted universe where left becomes right and life hangs by a thread.
Wells could be playful and unsettling in the same breath. The Man Who Could Work Miracles hands unlimited power to a very limited man—with chaotic results. The Door in the Wall tempts a statesman with a green door that leads to wonder, beauty, and regret. A Moth narrows its focus to a single, maddening presence that chips away at a rational mind.
And then there is the darker current running beneath his work. The Red Room traps us in a chamber where fear itself becomes the antagonist. The Sea Raiders drags something ancient and intelligent from the ocean depths onto the quiet shores of England. Whether gazing at the cosmos or listening for footsteps in a lonely house, Wells never lost sight of the human reaction to the unknown. Explore the stories below and return to the wellspring of vintage science fiction.
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