The Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison AND HG Wells?

Question: I'm yet to read either "version" of the Invisible Man, but are both the Ellison and Wells versions about the same thing? Or are their story lines completely different? And which "Invisible Man" came first (Ellison or Wells)?

Answer: The Wells book is pretty good early science fiction---the early 20th century. The Ellison book, about 50 years later, is really great and is not science fiction. They are different stories altogether. Postscript--in response to another Answerer---Ralph Ellison was born in 1913 and was not 7 when he wrote Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 shortly after it came out. I don't know if he was a socialist. I would hesitate to call it a book about the civil rights struggle because it is infinitely more than that, much as MOBY DICK is not really describable as a book about whale hunting, really.

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