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{{hatnote|This article is about the H.G. Wells short story. "A Vision of Judgement" is also a poem by [[Robert Southey]], parodied in Byron's [[The Vision of Judgment]].}}
{{Infobox short story <!--See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels]]-->
| name                = A Vision of Judgement
| image               = <!-- include the [[file:]] and size -->
| caption             = 
| author              = H. G. Wells
| title_orig          = 
| translator          = 
| country             = 
| language            = 
| series              = 
| genre               = Satire
| published_in        = The Butterfly, "A humorous and artistic magazine"<ref>{{cite book|title=The Butterfly|via=OCLC Worldcat|oclc=3681938}}</ref> 
| publication_type    = Magazine
| publisher           = 
| media_type          = Short story
| pub_date            = September 1899
| english_pub_date    = 
| preceded_by         = 
| followed_by         = 
| preceded_by_italics = 
| followed_by_italics = 
}}

Written in the late 19th century by [[H. G. Wells]] and first published in ''The Butterfly'' (September 1899),<ref>{{cite book |title=A Dream of Armageddon |author=H. G. Wells |author-link=H. G. Wells |page=365 |isbn=978-1-4351-1583-5 |publisher=Fall River Press|date=2009| orig-year =2006| oclc = 463620813}}</ref> and collected in ''The Obliterated Man and Other Stories'' (December 1925),<ref name=isfdb>See ISFDB listing in [[#External links]]</ref> "'''A Vision of Judgment'''" is a short story in 9 sections.  It portrays a [[Last Judgment]] in which God and the archangel [[Gabriel]] laugh at sinners and saints alike, embarrassing them until they flee "up the sleeve of God."  After every human soul has taken shelter there, all of humanity, "enlightened" and "in new clean bodies," is given a second chance.  God shakes them&mdash;or rather ''us''&mdash;"out of his sleeve upon the planet he had given us to live upon, the planet that whirled about green [[Sirius]] for a sun," saying "now that you understand me and each other a little better. .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. try again."<ref>H.G. Wells, "A Vision of Judgment," §9, in ''The Short Stories of H.G. Wells'' (London: Ernest Benn, 1927), p. 114.</ref>

"A Vision of Judgment" has been reprinted in  ''The Complete Short Stories of H. G. Wells'',<ref name=isfdb /> ''A Dream of Armageddon: The Complete Supernatural Tales''.,<ref name=isfdb /> and various other collections and anthologies. Some of the publications were under the title "'''A Vision of Judg''e''ment'''."

==Background==
Wells was raised by a mother&mdash;Sarah Wells née Neal (1822-1905)&mdash;with a "natural tendency to [[Protestant]] piety" and who believed "that God our Father and Saviour, personally and through occasional angels, would ''mind'' her; she believed that he would not be indifferent to her prayers; she believed she had to be good, carefully and continually, and not give Satan a chance with her.  Then everything would be all right."<ref>H.G. Wells, ''[[Experiment in Autobiography]]'' (New York: Macmillan, 1934), pp. 27 & 29-30.</ref> Wells rebelled against these beliefs early on.  "I was indeed a prodigy of Early Impiety. I was scared by Hell, I did not at first question the existence of Our Father, but no fear no terror could prevent my feeling that his All Seeing Eye was that of an Old Sneak and that the Atonement for which I had to be so grateful was either an imposture, a trick of sham self-immolation, or a crazy nightmare. I felt the unsoundness of these things before I dared to think."<ref name="H.G. Wells, 1934 p. 45">H.G. Wells, ''[[Experiment in Autobiography]]'' (New York: Macmillan, 1934), p. 45.</ref>  In his autobiography he writes that at the age of "eleven or twelve" "the light broke through to me and I knew this God was a lie."<ref name="H.G. Wells, 1934 p. 45"/>  He wrote a satirical anti-religious poem as early as 1885.<ref>David C. Smith, ''H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography'' (Yale University Press, 1986), p. 15.</ref>  Under the stress of [[World War I]] Wells went through an extended period of what he called in his autobiography "deistic phrasing," without, however, making "any concessions to doctrinal Christianity."<ref>H.G. Wells, ''[[Experiment in Autobiography]]'' (New York: Macmillan, 1934), p. 576.</ref>  But "[a]fter ''[[The Undying Fire (Wells novel)|The Undying Fire]]'', God as a character disappears from my work, except for a brief undignified appearance, a regrettable appearance, dressed in moonshine and armed with Cupid's bow and arrows in ''[[The Secret Places of the Heart]]'' (1922).  My phraseology went back unobtrusively to the sturdy [[atheism]] of my youthful days.  My spirit had never left it."<ref>H.G. Wells, ''[[Experiment in Autobiography]]'' (New York: Macmillan, 1934), p. 578.</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==External links==
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/h-g-wells/short-fiction|Display Name=The complete short fiction of H. G. Wells|noitalics=true}}
*{{isfdb title|id=63063|title=A Vision of Judgement}}

{{H. G. Wells}}

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[[Category:1899 short stories]]
[[Category:Fantasy short stories]]
[[Category:Short stories by H. G. Wells]]
[[Category:Fiction set around Sirius]]
[[Category:Works originally published in British magazines]]
[[Category:Fiction about God]]
[[Category:Last Judgment]]