The World Set Free

Plot

A frequent theme of Wells's work, as in his 1901 nonfiction book Anticipations, was the history of humans' mastery of power and energy through technological advance, seen as a determinant of human progress. The novel begins: "The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. ... Always down a lengthening record, save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more." (Many of the ideas Wells develops here found a fuller development when he wrote The Outline of History in 1918–1919.) The novel is dedicated "To Frederick Soddy's Interpretation of Radium", a volume published in 1909.

The war takes place in 1956, with both sides possessing nuclear weapons.

Scientists of the time 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,

Wells's "atomic bombs" have no more force than ordinary high explosive and are rather primitive devices detonated by a "bomb-thrower" biting off "a little celluloid stud". They consist of "lumps of pure Carolinum" that induce "a blazing continual explosion" whose half-life is seventeen days, so that it is "never entirely exhausted", so that "to this day the battle-fields and bomb fields of that frantic time in human history are sprinkled with radiant matter, and so centres of inconvenient rays."

Wells observes:

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 remaining 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's theme of world government is presented as a solution to the threat of nuclear weapons.

The devastation of the war leads the French ambassador at Washington, Leblanc, to summon world leaders to a conference at Brissago, where Britain's King Egbert sets an example by abdicating in favor of a world state. Such is the state of the world's exhaustion that the effective coup of this council ("Never, of course, had there been so provisional a government. It was of an extravagant illegality.") is resisted only in a few places. The defeat of Serbia's King Ferdinand Charles and his attempt to destroy the council and seize control of the world is narrated in some detail.

Brought to its senses, humanity creates a utopian order along Wellsian lines in short order. Atomic energy has solved the problem of work. In the new order "the majority of our population consists of artists."

The World Set Free concludes with a chapter recounting the reflections of one of the new order's sages, Marcus Karenin, during his last days. Karenin argues that knowledge and power, not love, are the essential vocation of humanity, and that "There is no absolute limit to either knowledge or power."

Influence on invention of nuclear weapons

Wells's knowledge of atomic physics came from reading books by William Ramsay, Ernest Rutherford, and Frederick Soddy; the last discovered the disintegration of uranium. Soddy's book Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt praises The World Set Free.

Leo Szilard, a Hungarian a generation younger than Wells, grew up reading and enjoying the works of Wells, both fiction and nonfiction, and became a nuclear physicist. In 1929 he met Wells, who urged him to discover new sources of energy which could bring humankind to the stars. The question occupied Szilard's thoughts in the years thereafter, and in 1932 he read and was disturbed by The World Set Free. The following year, Szilard saw a newspaper article in which Rutherford dismissed the idea that particle acceleration could ever generate energy. Szilard was irritated by Rutherford's arrogant rejection of the future of a yet undeveloped field, and a few days later, while on a walk, the idea of nuclear chain reaction came to him. He filed for a patent on the mechanism in 1934, but remembering The World Set Free, treated the subject cautiously. In a volume published in 1968, Szilard wrote: "Knowing what [a chain reaction] would mean—and I knew because I had read H.G. Wells—I did not want this patent to become public."

References

References

1. David C. Smith, ''H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography'' (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 83–85. According to Smith, Wells wrote ''The World Set Free'' at the château of his mistress, Elizabeth von Arnim, dubbed "Soleil" ('Sun'), in [[Randogne]], Switzerland.
2. Dyson, George. (2002). "Project Orion". Macmillan.
3. Flynn, John L.. (2005). "War of the Worlds". Galactic Books.
4. Parrinder, Parrinder. (1997). "H.G. Wells". Routledge.
5. ''A Prophetic Trilogy'' was serialized in ''Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine'' (January 1914 – March 1914).
6. H.G. Wells, ''The World Set Free'' (London: W. Collins Sons, 1924), p. 15 ("Prelude: The Sun Snarers", §1).
7. Soddy, Frederick. (1909). "The Interpretation of Radium". John Murray.
8. Wells, H. G.. (1921). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
9. Wells, H. G.. (1924). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
10. Wells, H. G.. (1924). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
11. Wells, H. G.. (1924). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
12. Wells, H. G.. (1914). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
13. Wells, H. G.. (1914). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
14. Wells, H. G.. (1914). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
15. Wells, H. G.. (1924). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
16. Wells, H. G.. (1924). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
17. Wells, H. G.. (1924). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
18. Wells, H. G.. (1924). "The World Set Free". [[W. Collins, Sons]].
19. William Lanouette and Bela A. Silard, ''Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard: the Man Behind the Bomb'' (C. Scribner's Sons, 1992), p.107
20. "H.G. Wells and the Scientific Imagination". The Virginia Quarterly Review..
21. Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie, ''H.G. Wells: A Biography'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), p. 299.