Sadly, the book lacks a main character to centre the plot around. This is HG Wells at the peak of his powers, writing prophetically with imagination and flair. It’s more of a manifesto than a narrative - a history textbook that tells of the future rather than the past. He accepts that there were things he got right, and things he got wrong, and so we go into chapter one with no false expectations. In it, he admits that, comparing what he wrote with how events turned out, the book seems like a work of idealism rather than realism. The preface is an introduction written by HG Wells in 1921, a few years after the story’s initial publication. Sarah’s commentary covers a wide breadth of topics raised by the story, and it’s a great way to prepare the reader’s mind for what’s to follow. Sarah praises it for what it does well, and candidly highlights its flaws, but more importantly, gives reasons for why it succeeds or fails.

The analysis of the book is done with a clarity that is both incisive and fair. There’s a scholarly introduction to the text by Sarah Cole. There was a time when scientific discovery was inspiring creative minds to invent stories of proto-science-fiction, and this book most definitely fits into that category. The story was first published in the early 1900s, but this volume is part of a new collection - a new series of books - that were all written in the period of what’s been coined The Radium Age. The World Set Free is a prophetic depiction of a future society which breaks free from war - a hopeful, philosophical, and idealistic read that’s packed with imagination and ideas. So I was really excited to read a Wells book that’s been hidden in the shadow of his more famous works. Let me start by just coming out and saying it - I’m a big HG Wells fan. Wells’ supposedly happy ending - a planetary government presided over by European men - may not appeal to contemporary readers, but his anguish at the world’s self-destructive tendencies will strike a chord. With a cast of characters including Marcus Karenin, the moral centre of the narrative Firmin, a proto-Brexiteer and Egbert, the visionary young British monarch, Wells dramatises a world struggling for sanity. Drawing on discoveries by physicists and chemists of the time, Wells foresees both a world powered by clean, plentiful atomic energy - and the destructive force of the neutron chain reaction. Wells - the first to imagine a ”uranium-based bomb” - offers a prescient description of atomic warfare that renders cities unlivable for years. In a novel written on the eve of World War I, HG Wells imagines a war “to end all wars” that begins in an atomic apocalypse but ends in an enlightened utopia.

The world set free