Herbert George Wells was perhaps most widely known as the writer of such common works of technology fiction as The Time Machine and War from the Worlds. Nonetheless it was in his short stories, created when he was a man embarking on a literary profession, that he first explored the tremendous potential of the scientific discoveries of the day. He referred to his stories as “a miscellany of innovations,” yet his enthusiasm for technology was tempered by an awareness of its horrifying destructive powers as well as the threat it could pose to the people. A consummate storyteller, he made fantastic animals and machines entirely believable, and by placing ordinary men and women in extraordinary circumstances, he explored what it means to be alive in a hundred years of rapid medical progress. “Small Mother Up the Morderberg,” is normally a humorous tale about a mom and kid trekking to the very best of a hill.