It’s hard to believe but in the early decades of the 20th century there were regular public debates between four of the greatest writers of the era: HG Wells, Bernard Shaw, GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. They would travel around the country, pitching up in church halls and town halls, and conduct public debates on the great issues of the day. Wells and Shaw argued for the progressive nostrums of the era, Chesterton and Belloc for Christianity and tradition.

What a gloriously challenging prospect that must have been – and how different from the dumbed-down discourse of our own time. Reading this collection of short stories by Wells reminded me of this peripatetic show of intellectual fireworks – and also taught me why Wells was a better writer than philosopher.

For Wells was, philosophically, an early example of progressive materialism, a subscriber to most of the most pernicious nostrums of his day, from eugenics to scientific racism, all under the guise of progress. Wells saw himself as an intellectual and these debates presented him as such.

But the stories show that his strongest intellectual faculty was his imagination, not his intellect. And, as such, this means that his stories are wiser than his philosophy. For his imagination went far beyond the material limitations of his philosophy, as well as undercutting and revealing its limitations. The Time Machine, not included here, with its invention of decadent Eloi and Morlocks, and the bleakest ending in fiction showed the limits of material hope better than Chesterton or Belloc could manage in debate. The stories here play with ideas and explore them imaginatively, achieving in the best of them a terrible, profound wisdom of vision.

That was the tragedy of Wells’ life: his imagination was the source of his vision but his intellect attempted to constrain it to the limits of his philosophy. His last work, the despairing Mind at the End of its Tether, showed his recognition of the futility of his intellectual enterprise. But his stories are better than his philosophy and many of the best are in this collection.