H.G. Wells

The World Set Free

by

WE ARE

ALL THINGS THAT

MAKE AND PASS,

STRIVING UPON A

HIDDEN MISSION,

OUT TO THE

OPEN

SEA.

THE WORLD SET FREE

H.G. WELLS

TO

FREDERICK SODDY'S

'INTERPRETATION OF RADIUM'

THIS STORY, WHICH OWES LONG PASSAGES

TO THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER OF

THAT BOOK, ACKNOWLEDGES

AND INSCRIBES

ITSELF

PREFACE

THE WORLD SET FREE was written in 1913 and published early in

1914, and it is the latest of a series of three fantasias of

possibility, stories which all turn on the possible developments

in the future of some contemporary force or group of forces. The

World Set Free was written under the immediate shadow of the

Great War. Every intelligent person in the worldfelt that

disaster was impending andknew no way of averting it, but few of

us realised in the earlier half of 1914 how near the crash was to

us. The reader will be amused to find that here it is put off

until the year 1956. He may naturally want toknow the reason

for what will seem now a quite extraordinary delay. As a

prophet, the author must confess he has always been inclined to

be rather a slow prophet. The war aeroplane in the world of

reality, for example, beat the forecast in Anticipations by about

twenty years or so. I suppose adesire not to shock the sceptical

reader's sense of use and wont and perhaps a less creditable

disposition to hedge, have something to do with this dating

forward of one's main events, but in the particular case of The

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