The Invisible Man: A science fiction novel by H. G. Wells about a scientist able to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it neither ... nor reflects light and thus becomes invisible

Cursed by his own invention a brilliant scientist is driven to a life of crime in this groundbreaking novel from a master of mystery and science fictionThe Invisible Man is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells published in 1897. Originally serialized in Pearsons Weekly in 1897 it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a bodys refractive index to that of air so that it absorbs and reflects no light and thus becomes invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself but fails in his attempt to reverse the procedure.Amazon.com ReviewWe rely in this world on the visual aspects of humanity as a means of learning who we are. This Ralph Ellison argues convincingly is a dangerous habit. A classic from the moment it first appeared in 1952 Invisible Man chronicles the travels of its narrator a young nameless black man as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness. Searching for a context in which to know himself he exists in a very peculiar state. I am an invisible man he says in his prologue. When they approach me they see only my surroundings themselves or figments of their imagination--indeed everything and anything except me. But this is hard-won self-knowledge earned over the course of many years.As the book gets started the narrator is expelled from his Southern Negro college for inadvertently showing a white trustee the reality of black life in the south including an incestuous farmer and a rural whorehouse. The college director chastises him: Why the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of an education are you getting around here? Mystified the narrator moves north to New York City where the truth at least as he perceives it is dealt another blow when he learns that his former headmasters recommendation letters are in fact letters of condemnation.What ensues is a search for what truth actually is which proves to be supremely elusive. The narrator becomes a spokesman for a mixed-race band of social activists called The Brotherhood and believes he is fighting for equality. Once again he realizes hes been duped into believing what he thought was the truth when in fact it is only another variation. Of the Brothers he eventually discerns: They were blind bat blind moving only by the echoed sounds of their voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves.... Here I thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference when in reality it made no difference because they didnt see either color or men.Invisible Man is certainly a book about race in America and sadly enough few of the problems it chronicles have disappeared even now. But Ellisons first novel transcends such a narrow definition. Its also a book about the human race stumbling down the path to identity challenged and successful to varying degrees. None of us can ever be sure of the truth beyond ourselves and possibly not even there. The world is a tricky place and no one knows this better than the invisible man who leaves us with these chilling provocative words: And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that on the lower frequencies I speak for you? --Melanie Rehak