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The Invisible Man is a famous 1897 science fiction novel(la) by H.G. Wells. It is commonly confused with the Ralph Ellison novel Invisible Man (1952).
Wells' novel was originally serialized in Pearson's Magazine in 1897, and published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is "Griffin", a scientist who theorizes that if a person's refractive index is changed to exactly that of air and his body does not absorb or reflect light, then he will not be visible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but becomes mentally unstable as a result.
Film adaptations
The Invisible Man is also a movie produced by Universal Pictures in 1933, directed by James Whale. The movie is considered one of the great Universal horror films of the 1930s, and it spawned a number of sequels, plus many spinoffs using the idea of an "invisible man" that were largely unrelated to Wells' original story. Among these were The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Invisible Woman (1940) and Invisible Agent (1942).
A comic version of the theme, starring Chevy Chase, was released in 1992 as Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Another related movie is the 2000 Paul Verhoeven film Hollow Man.
In the 1987 compilation comedy Amazon Women on the Moon, a "son" of the original Invisible Man played by Ed Begley, Jr. appears in a short spoof of the 1933 Claude Rains film, titled Son of the Invisible Man. He was named simply "Griffin".
TV adaptations
At least four television series have been produced for American television, and all have cast the "invisible man" character in the role of secret agent. See The Invisible Man (TV series).
Other references
Rock bands Queen and Helloween both recorded songs called "The Invisible Man"; Scatman John covered the former's version. The British satirical show Spitting Image also featured a song called "The Invisible Man", sung by the puppet of then-Employment Secretary Tom King.
The character of the Invisible Man, given a full name of "Hawley Griffin", appears in the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore. In the movie adaptation, the character is renamed "Rodney Skinner", and instead of being the inventor of the formula, he is a thief who stole the formula.
Ken Hill adapted the book to play form in 1991, and it debuted at Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1991. It played in the West End in 1993 with Michael N. Harbour as Griffin.
Science
- In 2006 Graeme Milton at Utah University and Nicolae-Alexandru Nicorovici at Sydney University of Technology claimed to have worked out how to make a "cloaking device" to render objects invisible at certain frequencies of light. The cloaking device relies on recently discovered materials that have a negative refractive index, which effectively makes light travel backwards.
- A Russian writer Yakov I. Perelman has pointed out in Physics Can Be Fun (1913) that from a scientific point of view, a man made invisible by Griffin's method should have been blind, since a human eye works by absorbing incoming light, not letting it through completely.
External links
- Text of the novel
- The Invisible Man in TomeRaider 3 Format
- Librivox recording of The Invisible Man -- free, human-read audiobook
- 3 may 2006 guardian article about Milton and Nicorovici's invention
1897 novels | Science fiction novels | Mad science
Der Unsichtbare | El hombre invisible | L'Homme invisible (roman) | L'uomo invisibile | האיש הבלתי נראה | 隐身人
"The Invisible Man"