Summary of the Text The Man Who Could Work Miracles

The Book: “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” from The Time Machine and Other Stories by Herbert George (H.G.) Wells.  First published in 1898.  The edition read was published in 1969 (copyright 1963) by Scholastic Book Services.

The Setting: Earth, unspecified present.

The Story: A skeptic with a silly name, George McWhirter Fotheringay, suddenly discovers that reality obeys his every command.  Hijinks ensue.  Fotheringay turns a cane into a rosebush, sends a policeman to hell and, later, to San Francisco.  Concerned about the policeman’s well being, Fotheringay seeks the advice of the local clergyman.  The clergyman and Fotheringay strike upon the idea of using the miraculous powers for good, ignoring the policeman.  They creep about in the dead of night, reforming drunkards, turning beer to water, and curing the vicar’s wart.  But they need more time to do good!  So the clergyman suggests that Fotheringay stop the earth turning, so that time stops.  But it all goes terribly wrong…

The Science: The science is good!  I know, because I asked the internet.  Not the miracles, mind you.  The “force of will” behind the miracles is not scientifically sound, but the consequences of stopping the earths rotating suddenly is accurate.  Everything on the face of the earth would go flying off, there would be a horrific wind, and, essentially, the earth would get torn apart and everything would die.  A+ on this one, Mr. Wells.

The Reaction: A fun little story.  Like literary popcorn shrimp.  Tasty, but not filling. I really like Fotheringay; he never thought to go mad with his power, and he was very concerned about rectifying his single major abuse of power.  Just the sort of fellow who ought to have the power of miracles, if anyone should.  Although maybe he ought to have a better grasp of physics…

 An unprepossessing clerk, George McWhirter Fotheringay, is involved in an argument in the Long Dragon bar concerning whether miracles actually exist. Fotheringay does not believe in miracles; he is a skeptic and a rationalist. He states, “Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It’s something contrariwise to the course of nature done by power or Will, something what couldn’t happen without being specially willed.” By way of example, Fotheringay explains that the gas lamp lighting the bar could not burn upside down. If it were to do so, that would be a miracle. He continues in his charade by telling the lamp to turn upside down without breaking but to go on burning steadily.

The incredible happens: The lamp does just that. Fotheringay is accused of creating a silly trick and asked to leave. Later, alone in his little bedroom, he begins to grapple with what has just happened and realizes that at the exact moment he gave the command for the lamp to turn upside down, his mind had inadvertently willed it to do so. Fotheringay tests his theory with several simple experiments; then recalling that he must rise early in the morning for work, he commands a comfortable night’s sleep for himself.

The next day, Fotheringay begins to think about the materialistic means to which he can turn his power.

The Man Who Could Work Miracles is a 1936 British fantasy-comedy film. It is a greatly expanded version of H.G. Wells’s story of the same name. It was the final adaptation of one of Wells' works to be produced during his lifetime.

In The Man Who Could Work Miracles, three angels decide to experiment. They give haberdasher's assistant George Fotheringay (Roland Young), almost unlimited powers. He enters the Long Dragon Pub and begins arguing with his friends about miracles and the impossibility of them, and during this argument he inadvertently causes a miracle; he causes an oil lamp to turn upside down, without anyone touching it and with the flame burning steadily downwards rather than righting itself. He soon runs out of willpower and is thrown out of the pub for spilling oil on the floor and causing a commotion.

When he arrives at his home, he performs the same trick with a small candle and finds that it works. He is so overjoyed, he spends the better part of the night working miracles such as lifting his table, lifting his bed, enlarging a candle-extinguisher to a brightly painted cone, making a kitten appear under it, and turning his bed into a cornucopia of fruits and fluffy bunnies.

Next day, he makes his miracles known to the public. A policeman discovers his powers, and when he begins to annoy Fotheringay, Fotheringay curses, telling him to "Go to blazes [hell]!" - where the poor Bobby finds himself surrounded by flames, swirling smoke, sulphur, and the howls of adulterers and liars. Fotheringay is shocked, and has the cop relocated to San Francisco where he finds himself in the midst of capitalists, automobiles, and Spearmint gum.

Nobody agrees on how he should use his powers, so he contacts Mr. Maydig, the local vicar. The vicar thinks up a plan to bring about a millennium and have Fotheringay abolish famine, plague, and war. They celebrate this by playing a miraculous trick on a local war profiteer and having his whisky, beer, and cocktails turn to mineral water, and his swords and weapons turn to books and agricultural tools. When the war profiteer hears about this, he decides to kill Fotheringay but the assassination plot fails as Fotheringay has made himself invulnerable.

Fotheringay decides not to have a millennium but to do what he wants, believing that everyone else only wants to use him. In a fit of reckless pompousness, Fotheringay changes the Colonel's house into a spectacular palace of real gold and marble. He then summons up all the pretty girls of Essex, after which he summons the butlers in Essex, the leaders of the world, the teachers, musicians, priests, etc. He dresses up like a king and appoints the girl he loves as empress. He then commands the leaders of the world to create a utopia, free of greed, war, plague, famine, jealousy, and toil. Maydig begs Fotheringay to wait until the following day, so Fotheringay buys some time by making the Earth stop rotating. Of course, everything on Earth has adapted to the rotation of the Earth and so, like a car coming to a sudden halt after travelling at 130 MPH, the world falls to pieces as people fly through the ice-cold air and buildings crumble.

In the end, Fotheringay, who has survived, uses his powers to put things back as they were before, willing away the power to work miracles and erasing all memory of the events. Fotheringay appears again in the pub, tries the trick with the lamp, but fails.