The World Set Free by H. G. Wells (best romance ebooks .txt) ๐
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After learning of atomic physics, H. G. Wells began to think of its potential impact on human society. In The World Set Free, atomic energy causes massive unemployment, shaking the already fragile social order. The ambitious powers of the world decide to seize the opportunity to compete for dominance, and a world war breaks out, echoing the looming Great War about to ignite in 1914. Waking to the catastrophe, humanity begins the hard search for a way into a better future. The novel traces a soldier, an ex-king, a despot, and a sage through a profound transformation of human society, and we gain a window into Wellsโ own thoughts and hopes along the way.
With one prophetic stroke, Wells gives the first detailed depiction of atomic energy and its potential destructive power, and predicts the use of the air power in modern warfare. He may have even directly influenced the development of nuclear weapons, as the physicist Leรณ Szilรกrd, shortly after reading the novel in 1932, then conceived of harnessing the neutron chain reaction critical to the development of the atom bomb.
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- Author: H. G. Wells
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No first-class intelligence had been sought to specialise in and work out the problem of warfare with the new appliances and under modern conditions, but a succession of able jurists, Lord Haldane, Chief Justice Briggs, and that very able Kingโs Counsel, Philbrick, had reconstructed the army frequently and thoroughly and placed it at last, with the adoption of national service, upon a footing that would have seemed very imposing to the public of 1900. At any moment the British Empire could now put a million and a quarter of arguable soldiers upon the board of Welt-Politik. The traditions of Japan and the Central European armies were more princely and less forensic; the Chinese still refused resolutely to become a military power, and maintained a small standing army upon the American model that was said, so far as it went, to be highly efficient, and Russia, secured by a stringent administration against internal criticism, had scarcely altered the design of a uniform or the organisation of a battery since the opening decades of the century. Barnetโs opinion of his military training was manifestly a poor one, his Modern State ideas disposed him to regard it as a bore, and his common sense condemned it as useless. Moreover, his habit of body made him peculiarly sensitive to the fatigues and hardships of service.
โFor three days in succession we turned out before dawn andโ โfor no earthly reasonโ โwithout breakfast,โ he relates. โI suppose that is to show us that when the Day comes the first thing will be to get us thoroughly uncomfortable and rotten. We then proceeded to Kriegspiel, according to the mysterious ideas of those in authority over us. On the last day we spent three hours under a hot, if early, sun getting over eight miles of country to a point we could have reached in a motor omnibus in nine minutes and a halfโ โI did it the next day in thatโ โand then we made a massed attack upon entrenchments that could have shot us all about three times over if only the umpires had let them. Then came a little bayonet exercise, but I doubt if I am sufficiently a barbarian to stick this long knife into anything living. Anyhow in this battle I shouldnโt have had a chance. Assuming that by some miracle I hadnโt been shot three times over, I was far too hot and blown when I got up to the entrenchments even to lift my beastly rifle. It was those others would have begun the sticking.โ โโ โฆ
โFor a time we were watched by two hostile aeroplanes; then our own came up and asked them not to, andโ โthe practice of aerial warfare still being unknownโ โthey very politely desisted and went away and did dives and circles of the most charming description over the Fox Hills.โ
All Barnetโs accounts of his military training were written in the same half-contemptuous, half-protesting tone. He was of opinion that his chances of participating in any real warfare were very slight and that, if after all he should participate, it was bound to be so entirely different from these peace manoeuvres that his only course as a rational man would be to keep as observantly out of danger as he could until he had learnt the tricks and possibilities of the new conditions. He states this quite frankly. Never was a man more free from sham heroics.
ยง VIBarnet welcomed the appearance of the atomic engine with the zest of masculine youth in all fresh machinery, and it is evident that for some time he failed to connect the rush of wonderful new possibilities with the financial troubles of his family. โI knew my father was worried,โ he admits. That cast the smallest of shadows upon his delighted departure for Italy and Greece and Egypt with three congenial companions in one of the new atomic models. They flew over the Channel Isles and Touraine, he mentions, and circled about Mont Blancโ โโThese new helicopters, we found,โ he notes, โhad abolished all the danger and strain of sudden drops to which the old-time aeroplanes were liableโโ โand then he went on by way of Pisa, Paestum, Ghirgenti and Athens, to visit the pyramids by moonlight, flying thither from Cairo, and to follow the Nile up to Khartum. Even by later standards, it must have been a very gleeful holiday for a young man, and it made the tragedy of his next experiences all the darker. A week after his return his father, who was a widower, announced himself ruined, and committed suicide by means of an unscheduled opiate.
At one blow Barnet found himself flung out of the possessing, spending, enjoying class to which he belonged, penniless and with no calling by which he could earn a living. He tried teaching and some journalism, but in a little while he found himself on the underside of a world in which he had always reckoned to live in the sunshine. For innumerable men such an experience has meant mental and spiritual destruction, but Barnet, in spite of his bodily gravitation towards comfort, showed himself, when put to the test, of the more valiant modern quality. He was saturated with the creative stoicism of the heroic times that were already dawning, and he took his difficulties and discomforts stoutly as his appointed material, and turned them to expression.
Indeed, in his book, he thanks fortune for them. โI might have lived and died,โ he says, โin that neat foolโs paradise of secure lavishness above there. I might never have realised the gathering wrath and sorrow of the ousted and exasperated masses. In the days of my own prosperity things had seemed to me to be very well arranged.โ Now from his new point of view
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