3 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
From the perspective of 1913, Wells imagines an alternate future that goes through a hell of atomic war but ends up with local democracy, a world government, and productive, contented citizens.

Review
Much as Robert Heinlein’s, For Us, the Living was a loose story framework intended to showcase socio-economic essays, Wells’ The World Set Free is less novel than thought experiment. Broken into six sections, it sets up a world of atomic power in which, fumblingly and loosely, well-intentioned leaders set the world on a more constructive path.

Not all is resolved. In the final pages, a philosopher argues with two women about gender, with the former wanting to abolish most gender distinctions and the latter uncomfortable. And the new world council, while posited to work, is described as a haphazard, rather ramshackle, and entirely undemocratic affair. This is not utopia, but there are certainly utopian elements. At last, humans are free to bring their creativity to the fore, there is local democracy (if not global), and people are broadly happy and prosperous.

Wells, while admitting the flaws of his broad concept of governance, elides almost all of the essential elements of how it would work. Atomic power, initially a terrible instrument of war, resolves our problems almost without effort. World leaders willingly give up power – though remain in charge. There’s a good deal of wish fulfillment here, if tempered with realism.

In fact, Wells seems to simply be sketching out one possibility for how the world could progress – one path through which, despite ourselves, we could succeed. It’s a somewhat interesting if not very convincing story, and it ends very abruptly.

Wells’ book is in some ways a better story that Heinlein’s. It’s more cohesive and makes more pretense at narrative. It covers a similarly long time period, but walks us through it, with a few recurring, sequential characters. All the same, it’s impossible to mistake this for an actual novel – it’s much too directed and didactic for that. It’s also fairly Euro-centric, but not terribly so.

The preface, added much later, admits to error. Wells, in 1913, mis-predicted the start of World War I by decades. And he pointedly regrets the lack of a unifying, world government-creating figure in the real world. But he does get right a number of things that could have grown into the world he envisions. The League of Nations, apocalyptic power of nuclear weapons, suffrage, gender equality, the potential (still unrealized now) of the single transferable vote. All these are things might have worked out differently, and it’s hard to argue that our world is better than the one Wells imagines. His war is worse, but we’ve had many more, with less to show for it.

All in all, an interesting if fairly dry read.

I picked up this book because somewhere along the way I heard that it spoke about atomic war written in 1913, published in 1914, a time during which everyone was denying the possibility war. Like so much of Wells' writing it is terribly prophetic. Imagine, considering the impact of atomic war 30 years before it actually became a reality.

The atomic bombs in The World Set Free were vastly different than those unleashed on Japan, but I believe they were much more devastating; a point open for discussion. In any case, it changed Wells' world. He makes references to imagined future events that sound like history. He proposes, among other things, organizations much like the League of Nations promoted by President Wilson after WWI. He describes with considerable specificity the difficulty with getting the various 'kings and princes' to go along with the plan.

He offers descriptions of the necessary changes to long standing cultural issues like religion and the rights and necessary role of women. This seems to cover a lot of territory which we have seen happening across the world since this book was published.

I found it fascinating for its insight offered so early in the modern history. It does get a bit preachy from time to time and it ends rather abruptly. I actually had my Kindle read it to me while walking. It ended so abruptly that I wondered if my battery finally went flat and Kindle stopped. It didn't.

It is a short book with predictions that are so close to the mark you will be astonished.

I can recommend it.

Although there are a lot of amazing predictions such as atomic energy and automation within this book, the style is about as dry as could be. There's no overall story, just a series of vignettes about the lead up and aftermath of a world war. Characterization is almost nonexistent. Still, it's a seminal work of early science fiction that undoubtedly influenced many writers and thinkers of the 20th Century.

First published in 1914, The World Set Free is about a collossal nuclear war in the 1950s and its aftermath.
Reading this description, the book sounds like a distopian. However, it is in actual fact a utopian. Wells talks about the gross waste of ressources in the 19. century, a problem that has been solved after "The Last War" along with all other problems. (He would be horrified to see the 21. century)

Problems I had:
- I feel like the nuclear bombs were portrayed much more harmlessly than they really are, which is understandable since nobody at the time knew what this technology was capable of. The bombs were literally handed out of 2-man aeroplanes and destroyed parts of cities.
The idea that this kind of technology would lead to world peace and everyone renouncing power because of their encounter with these weapons seems ludicrous today.

- The novel is a product of its time and makes some misogynistic and sexist comments, most of them from the point of view or through the mouths of female characters.

All in all, it is very much a fantasy for a world peace on Wells' terms.

3.5 Stars only because it bored me at times. I have to state that I love H.G. Wells. He has an incredible imagination which was able to roughly predict so much about technology. He got a few things wrong of course, but in this novel he predicts the use of nuclear weapons and even calls them atomic bombs. He believes that the radiation will give a "perpetual explosion", which isn't true of course, but he does predict that there is the lasting effects of these weapons when used in an area. This book gets its good rating from me due to the fact that he wrote this before the discovery of the neuron and a scientist that discovered the neuron (or discovered nuclear reactions or something similar...can't remember) actually READ this book. I believe he stated that the story made him ponder if these things were indeed possible. Amazing how science and science fiction can influence each other. The final section of the book was more of a utopian dream of humanity. Unfortunately , due to my pessimism on the human condition, I felt it was pretty unrealistic, but hey, one can dream.

The fact that Wells wrote this without any knowledge of the future is amazing, he is almost spot on in some circumstances. The language is dense, but it is nice to read a thinking book every once in a while.