Manuscript of H. G. Wells's "The Betterave Papers," 1945

One of the earliest practitioners of science fiction, H. G. Wells’s most famous book, The War of the Worlds, caused a national panic when it aired as a radio drama. Many listeners believed it was a real news broadcast of an alien invasion. Wells was also a historian, journalist, and short story writer. VQR published Wells’s story “The Betterave Papers: The Story of Harold Swansdown Up to Date” in the Summer 1945 issue, when he was seventy-nine years old, just a year before his death.