文档介绍：THE WORLD SET FREE
THE WORLD SET
FREE
. 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
1
THE WORLD SET FREE
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 world felt that disaster was impending and knew 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 to know 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 a desire 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 World Set Free there was, I think, another
motive in holding the Great War back, and that was to allow the chemist to
get well forward with his discovery of the release of atomic energy.
1956--or for that matter 2056--may be none too late for that crowning
revolution in human potentialities. And apart from this procrastination of
over forty years, the guess at the opening phase of the war was fairly lucky;
the forecast of an alliance of the Central Empires, the opening campaign
through herlands, and the despatch of the British Expeditionary
Force were all justified before the book had been