The World Set Free The World Set Free
MIT Press / Radium Age

The World Set Free

H. G. Wells and Others
    • $15.99
    • $15.99

Publisher Description

In a novel written on the eve of World War I, H. G. Wells imagines a war “to end all wars” that begins in atomic apocalypse but ends in an enlightened utopia.

Writing in 1913, on the eve of World War I’s mass slaughter and long before World War II’s mushroom cloud finale, H. G. Wells imagined a war that begins in atomic apocalypse but ends in a utopia of enlightened world government. Set in the 1950s, Wells’s neglected novel The World Set Free describes a conflict so horrific that it actually is the war that ends war. 
 
Wells—the first to imagine a “uranium-based bomb”—offers a prescient description of atomic warfare that renders cities unlivable for years: “Whole blocks of buildings were alight and burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged flames looking pale and ghastly and attenuated in comparison with the full-bodied crimson glare beyond.” Drawing on discoveries by physicists and chemists of the time, Wells foresees both a world powered by clean, plentiful atomic energy—and the destructive force of the neutron chain reaction.
 
With a cast of characters including Marcus Karenin, the moral center of the narrative; Firmin, a proto-Brexiteer; and Egbert, the visionary young British monarch, Wells dramatizes a world struggling for sanity. Wells’s supposedly happy ending—a planetary government presided over by European men—may not appeal to contemporary readers, but his anguish at the world’s self-destructive tendencies will strike a chord.
 
Sarah Cole is the author of Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells and The Twentieth Century (2019). The Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Dean of Humanities at Columbia University, she is the cofounder of the NYNJ Modernism Seminar and founder of the Humanities War and Peace Initiative at Columbia. She is also the author of Modernism, Male Friendship, and the First World War (2003) and At the Violet Hour: Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland (2012).
 
Joshua Glenn, who was the first to describe the years 1900–1935 as science fiction’s “Radium Age,” has helped popularize stories from the era for over a decade now. A former Boston Globe staffer and publisher of the indie intellectual journal Hermenaut, he is coauthor of The Idler’s Glossary (2008), Significant Objects (2012), and the family activities guide UNBORED (2012). He is also cofounder of the brand consultancy Semiovox; and he publishes the blogHiLobrow.
 

GENRE
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
RELEASED
2022
May 3
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
282
Pages
PUBLISHER
MIT Press
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
710.9
KB

More Books Like This

The World Set Free The World Set Free
2019
The World Set Free The World Set Free
2017
8 Best Fantasy Novels 8 Best Fantasy Novels
2020
Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 10 Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 10
2020
The Autocracy of Mr Parham The Autocracy of Mr Parham
2017
Men Like Gods Men Like Gods
2017

More Books by H. G. Wells, Sarah Cole & Joshua Glenn

100 Eternal Masterpieces of Literature [volume 2] 100 Eternal Masterpieces of Literature [volume 2]
2024
50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 2 50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 2
2024
The Time Machine The Time Machine
2002
250 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die 250 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die
2023
The Island of Doctor Moreau The Island of Doctor Moreau
2017
The War of the Worlds The War of the Worlds
2015

Other Books in This Series

A World of Women A World of Women
2022
Of One Blood Of One Blood
2022
Theodore Savage Theodore Savage
2023
More Voices from the Radium Age More Voices from the Radium Age
2023
The Lost World and The Poison Belt The Lost World and The Poison Belt
2023
Voices from the Radium Age Voices from the Radium Age
2022