The World Set Free

by H. G. Wells, Murat Ukray (Illustrator)

Overview

THE WORLD SET FREE was written in 1913 and published early in 1914, and it is the latest of a series of three fantasias of possibility, stories which all turn on the possible developments in the future of some contemporary force or group of forces. The World Set Free was written under the immediate shadow of the Great War. Every intelligent person in the world felt that disaster was impending and knew no way of averting it, but few of us realised in the earlier half of 1914 how near the crash was to us. The reader will be amused to find that here it is put off until the year 1956. He may naturally want to know the reason for what will seem now a quite extraordinary delay. As a prophet, the author must confess he has always been inclined to be rather a slow prophet.

The war aeroplane in the world of reality, for example, beat the forecast in Anticipations by about twenty years or so. I suppose a desire not to shock the sceptical reader's sense of use and wont and perhaps a less creditable disposition to hedge, have something to do with this dating forward of one's main events, but in the particular case of The World Set Free there was, I think, another motive in holding the Great War back, and that was to allow the chemist to get well forward with his discovery of the release of atomic energy. 1956—or for that matter 2056—may be none too late for that crowning revolution in human potentialities. And apart from this procrastination of over forty years, the guess at the opening phase of the war was fairly lucky; the forecast of an alliance of the Central Empires, the opening campaign through the Netherlands, and the despatch of the British Expeditionary Force were all justified before the book had been published six months. And the opening section of Chapter the Second remains now, after the reality has happened, a fairly adequate diagnosis of the essentials of the matter. One happy hit (in Chapter the Second, Section 2), on which the writer may congratulate himself, is the forecast that under modern conditions it would be quite impossible for any great general to emerge to supremacy and concentrate the enthusiasm of the armies of either side.

There could be no Alexanders or Napoleons. And we soon heard the scientific corps muttering, 'These old fools,' exactly as it is here foretold.

These, however, are small details, and the misses in the story far outnumber the hits. It is the main thesis which is still of interest now; the thesis that because of the development of scientific knowledge, separate sovereign states and separate sovereign empires are no longer possible in the world, that to attempt to keep on with the old system is to heap disaster upon disaster for mankind and perhaps to destroy our race altogether. The remaining interest of this book now is the sustained validity of this thesis and the discussion of the possible ending of war on the earth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9786155565229
Publisher:	PublishDrive
Publication date:	04/11/2015
Series:	The World Set Free
Sold by:	PUBLISHDRIVE KFT
Format:	eBook
Pages:	260
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

English author Herbert George Wells wrote more than fifty novels and several short stories. He was born on 21 September 1866, in Bromley, Kent, and was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells. Wells married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells in 1891. In 1894 the couple got separated, and he fell in love with one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins, with whom he relocated to Woking, Surrey, in May 1895. Wells' greatest collection of work, which was lamented by younger authors he had influenced, was produced before the First World War. Wells passed away in his residence at 13 Hanover Terrace, which had an overlooked view of Regent's Park, in London on August 13, 1946, at the age of 79 due to unidentified causes. Wells was cremated at Golders Green Crematory, and his ashes were scattered into the English Channel at Old Harry Rocks, which is located in Dorset and approximately 3.5 miles from Swanage.

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

Series Foreword ix
Introduction: A Crash Louder Than Thunder xv
Sarah Cole
Preface xxv

Prelude: The Sun Snares 1
1 The New Source of Energy 25
2 The Last War 63
3 The Ending of War 113
4 The New Phase 163
5 The Last Days of Marcus Karenin 207

Afterword: Shall We Play a Game? 243
Joshua Glenn

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The World Set Free is a crucial novel in Wells’s amazing effort, and it’s great to see it in a new edition.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future

“A breathless story of great wars of World Powers, of hovering aeroplanes with atomic bombs, and of peace between Kings in a World Council.” 
—Sinclair Lewis, Detroit Free Press (1914)

“The color, vigor, and picturesqueness of Mr. Wells’s description of this last war combine to produce an amazing effect.”
—The New York Times (1914)
 
“The World Set Free is not so much fiction as a forecast of a quite improbable future.”
—The Bookman (1914)

Editorial Reviews

"The World Set Free, with its predictions of aerial warfare, atomic bombs, and international peace conferences, takes first place in the Nostradamus sweepstakes for those who prefer their science fiction to be predictive."
—Los Angeles Review of Books

From the Publisher

Published in 1914 and set in 1956, this is a fantasy of the possible. Before scientists split the atom, Wells foresaw the wonders of robotics, the positives and negatives of computers, and the horrors of weaponry that could bring an end to civilization as we know it. Wells's sometimes unpopular social policy rails against the dangers of isolationism and offers the logic of globalization. Shelly Frasier performs the narrative with appropriately thoughtful distance. She manages sensitivity and complexity as George Ponderevo considers mankind’s inevitable end. "…And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them." A prophetic, imaginative social reformer, Wells has long been recognized as a man ahead of his time. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

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