“I want things I can feel and handle,” explains the skeptical Dr. Barrack of H.G. Wells’s The Undying Fire. He is, he admits, “A Doubting Thomas, born and bred…I am an Agnostic by nature and habit and profession.” The patron saint of architects, stonecutters and masons, Thomas has been invoked throughout the ages to describe those for whom the senses are the foremost arbiters of belief and doubt. Having been absent at Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance, Thomas rejects the claims of his fellow disciples and protests, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and […]