I would broadly agree with this. It is pretty awful. It's interesting to compare with modern celebrity historicals, though: I find them painfully sycophantic at times, but that's probably a better approach than here showing the founder figure of all science fiction as a wimpy moron who couldn't think up an original idea and who is nothing like his real life namesake (I think Tat Wood suggested this is a completely different Herbert G. Wells which would make a degree of sense. As much as anything in Timelash makes sense).