AFU        The World Set Free by H G Wells

A relation of mine suggested  that I might find the above-named book interesting and enlightening; I found both emotions took place within me, and led me to a number of critical thoughts.  To explain my thoughts it is necessary to know of the dates of Wells' life and the first publication of this book.  To know these figures allows a reader to criticise both Wells and me.

Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley in Kent UK on the 21st of September 1866.  He passed away on 13th August 1946 , about a year after the real event of an atomic bomb being let off.  The copy of the book I read came from Nottinghamshire County Library and  it was published in 1988.  This edition had an introduction by Brian Aldiss, and he assesses the book's content in a modern light.  I'm not going to claim that I  am the same league as either the original author, or the reviewer.  What I will contend is that with an engineering background, I can offer a critique from a different perspective.

Aldiss's introduction told me of something of which I was unaware.  That is that the Manhattan Project had Berlin in mind, but the bomb was not ready until after the Nazi regime collapsed.  But the Japanese did not seem to be ready to give in until the overwhelming force of two bombs gave them a face-saving opportunity to surrender.  To add a personal note into the story, those two bombs probably saved my life, as I was due to go on a beach landing somewhere on Japan in August 1945, and our 'little escapade had to be called off' according to our commanding officer.

I found the prose of the book varied considerably, with parts written in a style that might be read to a seven-year-old, and other parts written in a most difficult style. Had it been a textbook, I would have had to re-read some parts several times.  But as it is a novel, I skimmed over the difficult bits in an attempt to keep up with the plot.  But, even then, the plot seemed to be very bitty.

I am also critical of Shaw's technical reports.  I know that language has changed over the last century, but I would have considered that an explosion in 1914 woud have been the same as an explosion in 2006.  An explosion cannot be continuous, it must be an instantaneous event to the human mind.  'A continuing explosion' is an oxymoron.  Also, I would have thought that Wells should have come up with a better method of delivering a bomb from an aircraft that having a passenger pick it up, pull out the plug and heave the thing over the side of the cockpit.  The Victorians were an ingenious people and had ample ability to design a method much closer to the present one of carrying and delivering a bomb by the method described.

Also, Wells suggested a very rapid development of atomic cars, far too rapid to have been plausible.  From the prototype of the first automobile, to a sleek and rapid machine took many tears of development.  Wells was inventive, but his optimism for mechanical progress was grossly over-ambitious.

But I did like his scenario for a scheming king to attempt to use the first world council for his own ends.  A Balkan king seemed to be the perfect villain!  But the venue of the first meeting of world leaders sounded to have come straight out of Shakespeare.

But the book is worth reading despite the criticisms I have levelled against it.  It is worth reading if only for the discovery of some unusual words.  Words like:
'recking'
'aëro' with the umlaut over the "E" (perhaps in Wells' time the word was pronounced differently to today)
'intenser', rather than 'more intense'
'remoter' rather than 'more remote'
'palimpest', being a word I had never met (Look it up in a good dictionary)
'naïve' with the umlaut over the "I"
Tibet being spelled 'Thibet'

I continually found myself reading the book as if it was a factual report on the present world, rather than the fictional imagination of a Victorian author.  I had to keep pulling myself back to the reality of the period in which Wells was writing, and the period of my present existence.

The last part of the book may be considered as a fantasy in future social engineering.  Wells also strays into psychology for his dramatics to make the yarn more engaging.  But I do believe that Wells was a little too trusting in the inherent goodness of mankind.  His statement near the end of the book that 'there is not a people in Western Europe in the early twentieth century that seemed capable of hideous massacres'.  But Wells had not been aware of the Nazi atrocities and the genocide in Bosnia.  Christian virtue is wonderful in thinking the best of all men, but such naive thoughts led us into World War 2, whereas Winston Churchill had other opinions in 1933.

Wells talks of religion in his musings on the New World Order.  He addresses the subject as if Christianity is the only significant world religion.  But even in Victorian times Islam was a major world faith.  This is just another example of how apparently-well-educated people are ignorant of some very basic facts.

The book has taught me one thing.  I was always under the impression that the "Z" in words like 'realization' was a Yankee artefact rather than good English.  But everywhere in this paperback, this type of word was spelled with a "Z". (Apologies to Uncle Sam)

Wells lapses into a sort of rhetorical-maudlin-reverie at the end when he describes his 'new world'.  It is a bit too sweet and honeyed.  To put in into the vernacular, is is just plain soppy.

Wells then changes tack and muses on a imagined research centre in the Himalayas where an index of all the worlds knowledge is being stored.  It seems to be such an archaic method now that we use such a different method of data-storage to what Wells knew.  This is a further example of the absurdity of forecasting the future.  Tiny things, quite unimaginable  at the time, affect the future in enormous ways.

To end my discourse on Wells and his book:  I would love to dig him up and tell him about global warming and climate change