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Here We Are (2020), Graham Swift's latest novel to date, tells the story of a love triangle between three young variety artists over a few weeks in the summer of 1959. As it is narrated from the present-day perspective fifty years later, when the last surviving member of the trio looks back on her life, remembering in particular the events of the fateful summer which culminated in the tragic loss of her ex-fiancé, the novel at first sight resembles Swift's immediately preceding piece, Mothering Sunday (2016), which employs a similar narrative strategy and revolves around a similar central theme. This paper, however, argues that besides these similarities, Here We Are differs from Mothering Sunday in a number of key regards, which is why it can be read as its precursor's loose duology which complements rather than replicates it. This paper demonstrates that the novel not only combines its author's idiosyncrasies with the narrative forms and perspectives to which he has turned to recently, but also allows him, through metacommentary, to indirectly express his ideas concerning the social, ethical and aesthetic aspects of fiction writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses six mad scientist characters from H. G. Wells's early fiction. The analysed mad scientists are as follows -- the Bacteriologist from "The Stolen Bacillus", Hapley from "A Moth -- Genus Novo", the Time Traveller from The Time Machine, Doctor Moreau from The Island of Doctor Moreau, Griffin from The Invisible Man, and Cavor from The First Men in the Moon. The article uses a broader definition of the mad scientist, one that includes not only evil scientific geniuses but also other, more benign characters, as long as they are eccentric enough to be considered mad. The said mad scientists are divided into three different categories, depending on whether they are evil, benign or neither of the two. The article shows that the analysed mad scientists reflect the early Wells's disbelief in the power of science to change the world for the better. It is also argued that Wells's varied body of mad scientists enriched and diversified the mad scientist trope in the history of the SF genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]