” Adapt or perish, that is and always has been the implacable law of life for mankind. Either the human imagination and the will to live rises to the plain necessity of our case, and a renascent Homo sapiens struggles on to a new, a harder and happier world dominion, or he blunders down the slopes of failure through a series of unhappy phases, in the wake of all the monster reptiles and beasts that have flourished and lorded it on the earth before him, to his ultimate extinction”

The Fate of Homo Sapiens [1939]

H. G’s early science fiction and futurist writings were gloom laden, even predicting atomic warfare (1913) and the end of the world, But he could also be super optimistic, writing 1in 1902:

“All that the human mind has accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. A day will come when beings now in our thoughts and hidden in our loins will stand upon the earth as one stands upon a footstool, and laugh, and reach out their hands amid the stars” [Anticipations].