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The World Set Free (SF) - H. G. Wells ***

H. G. Wells is recognised as one of originators of science fiction. His remarkable novels, written around the start of the twentieth century, set the bar extremely high. The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds and The First Men in the Moon, for example, are all classics, while some of his science fiction short stories are arguably even better.

However, his style underwent a major change after 1910. Rather than write scientific romances (as science fiction was styled at the time), he moved to writing portentous future histories - books that feel more like non-fiction than fiction. The World Set Free is the archetype of this style. Great chunks of it feel very similar to plodding, tedious Edwardian history books. Where there are sections with actual characters, those characters are truly two-dimensional and feel like they are actors in a fairly awful stage play, rather than real people.

This presents the reviewer of The World Set Free with a particular challenge. The novel is generally held up as a remarkable book because, published just a few months before the start of the First World War, it gives us the concept of a war to end all wars - admittedly set in the 1950s, rather than 1914. Seemingly even more startlingly prescient, it describes the use of 'atomic bombs' which result in the end of the war. In Wells' utopian (from his viewpoint) vision, this also results in the founding of a world state (set up, of course, by important men of the elite from around the world) with concepts like ownership of property a thing of the past.

While the idea of atomic bombs do appear at first sight to be based on remarkable foresight (and Wells seems to have originated the term), it is easy to read too much into it as prescience. The publicity material for M.I.T.'s Radium Age series, of which this republishing is a part, tells us that Wells 'foresees both a world powered by clean, plentiful atomic energy - and the destructive force of the neutron chain reaction' and that one of the characters is a 'proto-Brexiteer'. But that is putting far more weight on this book than its fragile construction can stand.

The character Firmin is described as a proto-Brexiteer because he thinks the nation state still has a role - which is a rather more widespread view. And Wells' atomic bombs did not involve a chain reaction - a concept that wouldn't be developed until the 1930s. The bombs (which were entertainingly 'two feet across' and dropped by hand over the side of planes after being set in action by pulling out a plug with the teeth) are based on the radioactive decay of a fictional element called carolinum, which meant the bombs didn't explode but rather gave off intense heat for days after being dropped, producing mini-volcanoes.

This is still a ground-breaking book in its description of all-out war and of a kind of nuclear weapon (the idea for the bomb was based strongly on a collection of lectures by chemist Frederick Soddy, who with Ernest Rutherford came up with the concept of isotopes, which Wells acknowledges). This means I feel somewhat guilty about only giving it three stars, but it is a distinct chore to read. It's far too wordy, spends pages with nothing much happening and is turgid in the extreme. It is a classic that is deservedly little-read - but one that any student of science fiction needs to have read.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here
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