The War in the Air

by H. G. Wells

Overview

Long out of print! A visionary novel by the author of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine

This classic full-length novel from H. G. Wells imagines a world of Progress stricken by brutal conflict in the sky—written before the actual invention of airplanes.

Bert Smallways is a small man in a small town with big dreams. His most fantastic dream—flying—seems improbable. Prototype airplane after airplane crashes and burns.

Until one doesn’t.

Bert's desire to fly beckons him and combines with implacable fate to sweep him up in a fantastic/dramatic adventure in which he, a pawn of fortune at the center of it all, travels to far lands and distant battles envisioned in The War in the Air.

His adventures will have great consequence for the entire world.

But will this star-crossed young man find what he really desires? Come fly with Bert Smallways, a commoner with a comic, tragic, star-crossed, and high-flying fate, into a future that never was.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781680570892
Publisher:	Wordfire Press
Publication date:	12/02/2020
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

H.G. Wells was a professional writer and journalist, who published more than a hundred books, including novels, histories, essays and programmes for world regeneration. Wells's prophetic imagination was first displayed in pioneering works of science fiction, but later he became an apostle of socialism, science and progress. His controversial views on sexual equality and the shape of a truly developed nation remain directly relevant to our world today. He was, in Bertrand Russell's words, 'an important liberator of thought and action'.

Jay Winter is Professor of History at Yale University. He was previously Reader in History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. He is a specialist on the First World War, and one of the founders of the Historial de la grande guerre at Peronne, Somme, an international museum of the Great War.

Patrick Parrinder has written on H.G. Wells, science fiction, James Joyce and the history of the English novel. Since 1986 he has been Professor of English at the University of Reading.

Andy Sawyer is a Librarian at the University of Sheffield with a particular interest in science fiction.

Date of Birth:

September 21, 1866

Date of Death:

August 13, 1946

Place of Birth:

Bromley, Kent, England

Place of Death:

London, England

Education:

Normal School of Science, London, England

Table of Contents

	Introduction	vii
I.	Of Progress and the Smallways Family	1
II.	How Bert Smallways Got into Difficulties	21
III.	The Balloon	44
IV.	The German Air Fleet	63
V.	The Battle of the North Atlantic	95
VI.	How War Came to New York	116
VII.	The Vaterland is Disabled	138
VIII.	A World at War	160
IX.	On Goat Island	182
X.	The World under the War	211
XI.	The Great Collapse	230
	The Epilogue	246

Editorial Reviews

“An extraordinary concoction—as if H. G. had shaken up Kipps and The War of the Worlds and poured out a new story that would appeal both to those who liked his social comedies and those who had been impressed by his early fantasies of terror.” —Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie, H. G. Wells: A Biography

From the Publisher