In 2009, the 143rd birthday of [Herbert George] H. G. Wells (21 September) spurred some unusual doodles on the Google search page. Later the mystery was revealed in their blog.
"Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment."
--Ch. 1., War of the Worlds (1898)
"It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening"
--H.G. Wells, 24 January, 1902 lecture at the Royal Institute, London titled "The Discovery of the Future".
In his Preface to the 1941 edition of The War In The Air (first published in 1908, then in 1921) Wells wrote: "Again I ask the reader to note the warnings I gave in that year, twenty years ago. Is there anything to add to that preface now? Nothing except my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: 'I told you so. You damned fools.' (The italics are mine.)"
