Fairy Tale Spotlight: All Aboard for Ararat [Book Review]

"All Aboard for Ararat" is a book written by H.G. Wells. It was published in 1940 about six years before he died. I read this one because of its strong Biblical themes, but I knew going into it that it was going to be atheistic. H.G. Wells is a staunch atheist as well as being very pro-socialist and even rather blatantly pro-communist. It's just what he is, and he has been fairly open about it in a number of his books and personal writings.

The idea here is that it is the 40's, and the world is dealing with war. A man named Noah sees the whole human experiment as being a failure which prompts God to suddenly walked in on him and rather agree with this. After explaining all of his pains and woes, God proposes another flood to give the human race a chance to try again.

Yes, I know God said that he wouldn't flood the world again, but that didn't stop H.G. Wells from making it happen! Also the reasons for the original flood are extremely misrepresented!

Despite some glaring inconsistencies between this book and the Bible, I can actually tell that he read the book. He knew about a lot of things and even had some interesting analysis. The problem though is that he doesn't seem to understand the context of most of it. He makes very common mistakes that a lot of people make, even Christians, where they take the entire book to be prescriptive and not what it really is, mostly descriptive.

There is also a huge misunderstanding as to the nature of Satan. In the book, when God created light, it also formed his shadow. The shadow was Satan, being the dark side of God. This was absolute, hot boiled garbage. Also God did not create light in his own universe; he created it in ours. We don't even know what was happening in his world. And there is no evidence that God has ever struggled with Satan. The whole premise of this is fairly ignorant and self-serving for his book.

But even so, you might actually like the portrayal of God in this book. He is often genuinely amusing! And he does make a few good points about how nobody seems to understand his book (including the author of this one.) He came across as relaxed, humorous, and silly. To be perfectly honest, he was about a stone's through away from the way I wrote God in my two Christian books: "Our Devine Comedy" and "Our Devine Spinoff." Not even joking! I really enjoyed God in this one, despite how incorrect he was.

Sadly, the scenes with God are really the best parts, and they don't happen as much as I would have liked. The bulk of the book is a self-monologue from the main character about how the world after the second flood needs to become a communist utopia and that atheism should be the new religion. Even God seems to agree with this. Yes, God in this book would rather humans stop believing in him. What even...

One very interesting thing that does happen, and probably my favorite part, was that God accuses Noah of writing a whole bunch of books that were written by H.G. Wells. Noah actually did not do this and it left him seriously confused, but God doubles and triples down on it! I freaking love this moment, and it felt so real to me. God somehow knew that Noah was actually H.G. Wells and called him out on his crap. This whole book was just a vehicle for his socialistic nonsense, and, for some hilarious reason, H.G. Wells had a self-owning moment by making God break the fourth wall. Best damn part of the whole book! I even sometimes wonder if the real God made him do this!

The story does make it into to the ark scene, but it transitions into it like a dream. It was very surreal. Even Noah did not expect it to happen. There was also this extremely weird stuff about Jonah trying to get onto the ship, but they kept throwing him off. A whale eats him, spits him up, he tries to get back on the ship, they end up killing him and tossing him back off, and then the corpse just doggedly follows the boat, stinking up the local atmosphere. What even...

The sailing part of the story weirdly stops abruptly. It was as if the author just did not know how to end it. The whole book ends with a very sudden anti-climax. I literally did not expect it. I had planned on reading for about another week since there was a huge number of pages left over, but that was all filled with Wells' bibliography. What even... Whelp!

Even though this book has some entertaining parts in it, the bulk of it is actually really boring. For that reason, I can't really recommend it. But if you are interested in the stuff with God, it's mainly the first... very lengthy... chapter. There is some stuff near the end, but it's far more sparse. That said, this is a pro-communism/pro-atheism book without an ending. Read at your own risk.

This blog was written on March 15, 2023.

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