The World Set Free — Background and Themes

(2 User reviews) 303

In Category - Wandering Heroes Classic Adventures

Authors: Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2006 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: War stories; Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction; Nuclear warfare -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 69,025

Reading time 301 min

Text sections 9

Before opening The World Set Free — Background and Themes, the edition data offers a quick orientation: 69,025 words, 5 hr 1 min estimated reading time, and 9 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 21.3 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “War stories,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #1059

Wells's 1914 novel, written under the shadow of the Great War, forecasts atomic energy and global conflict. The excerpts show a king renouncing his throne amid war's end, a preface admitting prophetic delays, and a pastoral scene that contrasts with the impending catastrophe.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg1059

Read the Text

hen he was fed, when his lusts and his fears were all appeased, when the sun shone upon the squatting-place and dim stirrings of speculation lit his eyes. He scratched upon a bone and found resemblance and pursued it and began pictorial art, moulded the soft, warm clay of the river brink between his fingers, and found a pleasure in its patternings and repetitions, shaped it into the form of vessels, and found that it would hold water. He watched the streaming river, and wondered from what bountiful breast this incessant water came; he blinked at the sun and dreamt that perhaps he might snare it and spear it as it went down to its resting-place amidst the distant hills. Then he was roused to convey to his brother that once indeed he had done so—at least that some one had done so—he mixed that perhaps with another dream almost as daring, that one day a mammoth had been beset; and therewith began fiction—pointing a way to achievement—and the august prophetic procession of tales.

For scores and hundreds of centuries, for myriads of generations that life of our fathers went on. From the beginning to the ripening of that phase of human life, from the first clumsy eolith of rudely chipped flint to the first implements of polished stone, was two or three thousand centuries, ten or fifteen thousand generations. So slowly, by human standards, did humanity gather itself together out of the dim intimations of the beast. And that first glimmering of speculation, that first story of achievement, that story-teller bright-eyed and flushed under his matted hair, gesticulating to his gaping, incredulous listener, gripping his wrist to keep him attentive, was the most marvellous beginning this world has ever seen. It doomed the mammoths, and it began the setting of that snare that shall catch the sun.

That dream was but a moment in a man’s life, whose proper business it seemed was to get food and kill his fellows and beget after the manner of all that belongs to the fellowship of the beasts. About him, hidden from him by the thinnest of veils, were the untouched sources of Power, whose magnitude we scarcely do more than suspect even to-day, Power that could make his every conceivable dream come real. But the feet of the race were in the way of it, though he died blindly unknowing.

At last, in the generous levels of warm river valleys, where food is abundant and life very easy, the emerging human overcoming his earlier jealousies, becoming, as necessity persecuted him less urgently, more social and tolerant and amenable, achieved a larger community. There began a division of labour, certain of the older men specialised in knowledge and direction, a strong man took the fatherly leadership in war, and priest and king began to develop their _rôles_ in the opening drama of man’s history. The priest’s solicitude was seed-time and harvest and fertility, and the king ruled peace and war. In a hundred river valleys about the warm, temperate zone of the earth there were already towns and temples, a score of thousand years ago. They flourished unrecorded, ignoring the past and unsuspicious of the future, for as yet writing had still to begin.

Continue Reading →

H. G. Wells's The World Set Free (1914) opens with a preface that frankly acknowledges the author's tendency to be 'rather a slow prophet.' Written under the immediate shadow of the Great War, the novel postpones its imagined global conflict until 1956, a delay Wells attributes partly to a desire 'not to shock the sceptical reader's sense of use and wont.' The preface also credits Frederick Soddy's Interpretation of Radium as a key source, grounding the story's central conceit—the release of atomic energy—in contemporary science.

The excerpts that follow reveal a work that shifts between sweeping historical narrative and intimate scenes. A king, presiding over a post-war conference, eats bread and cheese on a mountainside and declares his intention to abolish his own crown. This moment of personal renunciation sits alongside the novel's larger concerns: the end of war, the emergence of a world republic, and the transformative power of new energy sources.

A Prophet's Confession

The preface offers a rare glimpse into Wells's own assessment of his predictive accuracy. He notes that the war aeroplane in reality 'beat the forecast in Anticipations by about twenty years,' and that the opening section of Chapter the Second remains 'a fairly adequate diagnosis of the essentials.' Yet he also admits that 'the misses in the story far outnumber the hits.' This self-awareness shapes how a reader approaches the novel: not as a failed prophecy, but as a deliberate fantasia on contemporary forces. Wells explicitly frames the work as 'the latest of a series of three fantasias of possibility,' each turning on 'the possible developments in the future of some contemporary force or group of forces.' The preface thus functions as a guide to the novel's method, inviting readers to consider which elements are extrapolation and which are wishful thinking.

The King's Renunciation

One of the most striking passages in the excerpts is a dialogue between a king and his counsellor Firmin. The king, eating bread and cheese on a lichenous stone, declares: 'For the first time in my life I am going to be a king. I am going to lead, and lead by my own authority.' His plan is to 'abolish, dispose of, finish, the crown to which I have been a slave.' The scene is remarkable for its blend of the mundane and the revolutionary: the aluminium cup, the bread and cheese, the 'roaring stuff' that has ended the 'rigid old world.' Wells uses the king's voice to articulate a vision of voluntary abdication as a 'sacrament of kings.' The king insists that 'the whole world has got to be a Republic, one and indivisible,' and that his duty is to 'make that easy.' This passage, drawn from later in the novel, suggests that The World Set Free is as concerned with political transformation as with technological change.

Pastoral Contrasts

Before the king's declaration, the excerpts present a pastoral interlude. The king marvels at 'a wilderness of golden broom' and reflects on the 'beautiful old life' of shepherds and peasants that has lasted 'in the Roman times and long ages before.' Firmin, however, sees only a 'social order that is fast vanishing away.' The king's reverie—'lovers, innumerable lovers, have caressed amidst this golden broom'—is undercut by Firmin's practical concerns and the looming conference. This contrast between idyllic past and uncertain future is a recurring structural device in the excerpts. Wells juxtaposes the king's appreciation of natural beauty with the 'roaring stuff' of atomic energy that has ended the old world. The scene also introduces the king's companion, Firmin, whose 'ungenial eye' and protests against the king's decision provide a foil for the monarch's idealism.

The Shape of the Narrative

The table of contents reveals a clear five-part structure: 'The Sun Snarers,' 'The New Source of Energy,' 'The Last War,' 'The Ending of War,' and 'The New Phase,' followed by 'The Last Days of Marcus Karenin.' This progression from discovery to conflict to resolution suggests a teleological arc, but the excerpts complicate any simple reading. The preface's admission of delay and error, the king's personal drama, and the pastoral interlude all indicate that Wells is as interested in the human responses to change as in the change itself. Readers should note that the excerpts are drawn from the beginning and later portions of the text; the middle sections—particularly 'The Last War'—are not represented here. The novel's treatment of atomic warfare, while prescient in concept, is filtered through Wells's Edwardian sensibilities and his faith in rational governance.

As you read The World Set Free, pay attention to the tension between Wells's prefatory self-criticism and the novel's confident narrative voice. The king's renunciation, the pastoral scenes, and the scientific framework all contribute to a work that is part warning, part hope. The excerpts suggest that the novel rewards readers who are interested in how early twentieth-century thinkers imagined the intersection of technology and politics. Consider which elements feel dated and which remain startlingly relevant.

That rainy afternoon, Wells’s prophecy of kings stepping down felt less like history, more like weather—inevitable, quiet. I closed the book and drifted, almost without thinking, to The Secret of the League: The Story of a Social War — Reading Companion, whose scenes of collapse held the same grey, patient light. One crumbling order simply led me to another.