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The World Set Free
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The World Set Free is a novel published in 1914 by H. G. Wells. The book is considered a prophetical novel foretelling the advent of nuclear weapons.
A constant theme in Wells' work, such as his 1901 nonfiction book Anticipations, was the role of energy and technological advance as a determinant of human progress. The novel opens: "The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power.
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Encyclopedia
The World Set Free is a novel published in 1914 by H. G. Wells. The book is considered a prophetical novel foretelling the advent of nuclear weapons.
A constant theme in Wells' work, such as his 1901 nonfiction book Anticipations, was the role of energy and technological advance as a determinant of human progress. The novel opens: "The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal."
Scientists of the day were well aware that the slow natural radioactive decay of elements like radium continues for thousands of years, and that while the rate of energy release is negligible, the total amount released is huge. Wells used this as the basis for his story. In his fiction,
The physicist Leó Szilárd read the book in 1932, conceived of the idea of nuclear chain reaction in 1933, and filed for patents on it in 1934. Soddy's book Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt praises The World Set Free.
Wells did have some knowledge of atomic physics, and William Ramsay, Ernest Rutherford, and Frederick Soddy's discovery of the disintegration of uranium. In Wells' story, the "atomic bombs" have no more power than ordinary high explosive—but they "continue to explode" for days:
Wells' offers the following explanation of how the bombs are supposed to work:
No bomb could "explode continuously" without destroying itself. This is one of the problems that had to be solved in the development of the real atomic bomb. Nuclear weapons are, and need to be, just as "instantaneous" as a conventional explosive. Thus Wells' bombs were not truly prophetic at an engineering level. Nevertheless, it is startling to read:
Wells viewed war as the inevitable result of the Modern State; the introduction of atomic energy in a world divided resulted in the collapse of society. The only possibilities left were "either the relapse of mankind to agricultural barbarism from which it had emerged so painfully or the acceptance of achieved science as the basis of a new social order." Wells' theme of world government is presented as a solution to the threat of nuclear weapons.
Trivia
- The 1995 novel The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter is an authorized sequel to Wells' The Time Machine. Carolinum appears in the story, as well as the detonation of a Carolinum bomb which, according to one character, will continue to burn for years.
- In 2001, a reprint of this book was released under the new title The Last War: A World Set Free.
External links
- , (edited and with an introduction by Greg Bear) Note: in his Introduction, Bear says without further explanation that "For this Bison Books edition, The World Set Free has been retitled. For this historical introduction, I will continue to use Wells's original title."
- , a story of mankind, by H. G. Wells, 1914. (a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & format)
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