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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โBut incidentally,โ said Rachel Borken; โincidentally you have half of humanity, you have womankind, very much specialised forโ โfor this love and reproduction that is so much less needed than it was.โ
โBoth sexes are specialised for love and reproduction,โ said Karenin.
โBut the women carry the heavier burden.โ
โNot in their imaginations,โ said Edwards.
โAnd surely,โ said Kahn, โwhen you speak of love as a phaseโ โisnโt it a necessary phase? Quite apart from reproduction, the love of the sexes is necessary. Isnโt it love, sexual love, which has released the imagination? Without that stir, without that impulse to go out from ourselves, to be reckless of ourselves and wonderful, would our lives be anything more than the contentment of the stalled ox?โ
โThe key that opens the door,โ said Karenin, โis not the goal of the journey.โ
โBut women!โ cried Rachel. โHere we are! What is our futureโ โas women? Is it only that we have unlocked the doors of the imagination for you men? Let us speak of this question now. It is a thing constantly in my thoughts, Karenin. What do you think of us? You who must have thought so much of these perplexities.โ
Karenin seemed to weigh his words. He spoke very deliberately. โI do not care a rap about your futureโ โas women. I do not care a rap about the future of menโ โas males. I want to destroy these peculiar futures. I care for your future as intelligences, as parts of and contribution to the universal mind of the race. Humanity is not only naturally overspecialised in these matters, but all its institutions, its customs, everything, exaggerate, intensify this difference. I want to unspecialise women. No new idea. Plato wanted exactly that. I do not want to go on as we go now, emphasising this natural difference; I do not deny it, but I want to reduce it and overcome it.โ
โAnd we remain women,โ said Rachel Borken.
โNeed you remain thinking of yourselves as women?โ
โIt is forced upon us,โ said Edith Haydon.
โI do not think a woman becomes less of a woman, because she dresses and works like a man,โ said Edwards. โYou women here, I mean you scientific women, wear white clothing like the men, twist up your hair in the simplest fashion, go about your work as though there was only one sex in the world. You are just as much women, even if you are not so feminine, as the fine ladies down below there in the plains who dress for excitement and display, whose only thoughts are of lovers, who exaggerate every difference.โ โโ โฆ Indeed we love you more.โ
โBut we go about our work,โ said Edith Haydon.
โSo does it matter?โ asked Rachel.
โIf you go about your work and if the men go about their work then for Heavenโs sake be as much woman as you wish,โ said Karenin. โWhen I ask you to unspecialise, I am thinking not of the abolition of sex, but the abolition of the irksome, restricting, obstructive obsession with sex. It may be true that sex made society, that the first society was the sex-cemented family, the first state a confederacy of blood relations, the first laws sexual taboos. Until a few years ago morality meant proper sexual behaviour. Up to within a few years of us the chief interest and motive of an ordinary man was to keep and rule a woman and her children, and the chief concern of a woman was to get a man to do that. That was the drama, that was life. And the jealousy of these demands was the master motive in the world. You said, Kahn, a little while ago that sexual love was the key that let one out from the solitude of self, but I tell you that so far it has only done so in order to lock us all up again in a solitude of two.โ โโ โฆ All that may have been necessary but it is necessary no longer. All that has changed and changes still very swiftly. Your future, Rachel, as women, is a diminishing future.โ
โKarenin?โ asked Rachel, โdo you mean that women are to become men?โ
โMen and women have to become human beings.โ
โYou would abolish women? But, Karenin, listen! There is more than sex in this. Apart from sex we are different from you. We take up life differently. Forget we areโ โfemales, Karenin, and still we are a different sort of human being with a different use. In some things we are amazingly secondary. Here am I in this place because of my trick of management, and Edith is here because of her patient, subtle hands. That does not alter the fact that nearly the whole body
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