Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was one of the most popular British writers of all time. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire and biography, but is now best remembered for his Science Fiction novels and has been called the &ldquo;Father of Science Fiction&rdquo;. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.<br />A great initiate and scholar of Esotericism and Occultism, and a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in addition to his fame as a writer, Wells was prominent in his lifetime as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons and satellite television. His Science Fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering.<br /><i>The</i> <i>Crystal Egg</i> is a science fiction short story written by Herbert George Wells in 1897. The story tells of a shop owner, named Mr. Cave, who finds a strange crystal egg that serves as a window into the planet Mars.