The World Set Free was published by Macmillan in May 1914 — two months before the outbreak of World War I — and is the most prophetic novel ever written. Wells described atomic energy derived from radioactive decay (building on Frederick Soddy’s The Interpretation of Radium), the development of atomic bombs, a world war in which major cities are destroyed by these weapons, and the subsequent creation of a world government to prevent further atomic warfare. The novel directly influenced real history: the physicist Leo Szilard read it in 1932 and credited it with inspiring his conception of the nuclear chain reaction the following year.
The Novel
The novel is structured as a future history rather than a conventional narrative. Wells traces the development of atomic energy from scientific curiosity to industrial power source to weapon, describing a world war (which he places in 1958) in which “atomic bombs” — Wells coined the term — are dropped on the world’s major cities. The bombs in Wells’s version do not explode once but burn continuously, rendering whole regions uninhabitable — a description closer to reactor meltdowns or dirty bombs than to the actual fission weapons of 1945, but strikingly prescient nonetheless.
After the destruction, surviving world leaders gather and create a world state — a rational, scientifically managed global government that abolishes war, redistributes wealth, and redirects human energy toward constructive purposes. This utopian resolution reflects Wells’s deepest political conviction: that only world government can save humanity from self-destruction.
Themes
Science and power — Wells understood, earlier than almost anyone, that atomic energy would fundamentally change the relationship between human knowledge and human survival. His novel is the first serious attempt to imagine the political consequences of nuclear power.
Prophecy — the novel predicted atomic energy, atomic weapons, the destruction of cities by those weapons, and the subsequent movement toward international governance. All of these came true, in approximately the order Wells described, within four decades of publication.
Utopia through catastrophe — Wells believed that humanity would not voluntarily create rational governance; it would have to be shocked into doing so by catastrophe. This pessimistic-optimistic worldview runs through all his later fiction.
Collecting The World Set Free
First edition (Macmillan and Co., London, 1914): Red cloth binding with gilt lettering. No dust jacket.
Market values:
- Fine copies: $3,000–$8,000
- Very good: $1,000–$3,000
- Good: $400–$1,000
First American edition (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1914): Published simultaneously. $1,000–$3,000.
The novel’s extraordinary prophetic accuracy gives it a unique status among Wells firsts. Its connection to the real development of nuclear weapons — through Szilard — makes it a genuine artifact of scientific history.