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    The World Set Free
    The World Set Free
    The World Set Free
    Audiobook6 hours

    The World Set Free

    Written by H. G. Wells

    Narrated by Shelly Frasier

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Last War erupts in Europe, rapidly escalating from bloody trench warfare and vicious aerial duels into a world-consuming atomic holocaust. Paris is engulfed by an atomic maelstrom, Berlin is an ever-flaming crater, and the cold waters of the North Sea roar past Dutch dikes and sweep across the Low Countries. Moscow, Chicago, Tokyo, London, and hundreds of other cities become radioactive wastelands. Governments topple, age-old cultural legacies are destroyed, and the stage is set for a new social and political order.

    The World Set Free is H. G. Wells's chilling and prophetic tale of a world gone mad with atomic weapons and of the rebirth of humankind from the rubble. Written long before the atomic age, Wells's novel is a riveting and intelligent history of the future that discusses for the first time the horrors of the atomic bomb, offering a startling vision of humanity purged by a catastrophic atomic war.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 25, 2009
    ISBN9781400180837
    Author

    H. G. Wells

    H.G. Wells is considered by many to be the father of science fiction. He was the author of numerous classics such as The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The War of the Worlds, and many more. 

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    Reviews for The World Set Free

    3/5

    11 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Similar to Starship Troopers but written well before it. This is a story about what could be or could not be when governments decide to work together instead of against each other. Also an idea of what could have happened if World War 1 could have been avoided.
    • 3/5
      A reiteration if you will of Wells' classic theme: the price a country, culture, people has to pay as technology advances into the unknown future. I wouldn't really call this a novel, it's almost like Wells is writing-contemplating-focusing on the unleashed and unbridled use of science for war, without developing characters or a standard plot.
    • 2/5
      One of my least favorite of the Wells books I've read so far.

      The plot moves very slow, and I have a hard time imagining people dropping "atomic bombs" from biplanes, knowing how powerful they truly are... not that the author could really be faulted for imagining bombs weaker than they really turned out to be.

      It just really wasn't my bag. There are much better examples of Wells to enjoy, and I'm not just talking "War of the Worlds."
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed the first of the book because he showed an amazing understanding of human nature. I must admit that I did not quite finish the book. I got bored with it.
    • 2/5
      I really did not enjoy reading this book. I like the classics most of the time. But The World Set Free was boring, slow moving, and uninteresting. I'm not generally a fan of war novels, so that may have a small bit to do with my review.
    • 2/5
      Wells comes off a quite short-sighted in this book, e.g. by describing unemployment among coal workers as a big problem when a cheap, new power supply (nuclear energy) becomes available, not considering that this new power supply could be a net benefit also to these workers. Maybe his position is actually more subtle, but I did not finish the book.
    • 4/5
      My reactions to reading this novel in 1996. Spoilers follow.“Introduction”, Brian Aldiss -- Introduction that emphasizes that Wells’ claim to being a prophet (a reputation he garnered in his day) rests on his prediction of atomic warfare in this novel and tanks in “The Land Ironclads”. The technological inspiration came from the work of Frederick Soddy who won a 1921 Nobel Prize for radioactive chemistry. Soddy wrote a popular account of his work in 1909. Aldiss points out the technical flaws of story construction and character in the novel.The World Set Free, H. G. Wells -- This novel gets much credit for being the first sf story to depict atomic warfare. Wells certainly shows warfare of incredible destructiveness and long lingering effects, but those effects are not from radioactivity but from continuous explosions, in effect perpetual volcanoes where the bombs land. I’m not sure if this accurately reflects the scientific opinion of the day. Still, like atomic warfare in our day, the introduction of the weapon produces social change, massive social change since the weapons are used promiscuously and, like Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come (which I know only from the film not the novel), a new social order – created and maintained by an elite group. If the descriptions of atomic warfare were not totally prescient, this may be the first sf novel to feature the atomic powered future (including cars and planes) that was common in sf until the 1960s. Here the atomic engines even have the side effect of producing gold which ruins Earth’s economy. This is Wells’ attempt to write a mosaic (in the sense of no central characters who take us all the way through the story) future history starting with chapter one which I liked a great deal. It details the history of Man’s growing sentience and increasing use of nature’s energy to better his life. This chapter also glosses man’s social inventions to tame his animal nature. Essentially, that is the typical Wellsian theme of this book. Man has outgrown his social inventions, including the legal system and capitalism. Wells’ replacement is, of course, his notion of a World State with socialism, scientific research, central planning, the “Dawn of Love”, and ruled by self-appointed elite (here seen taking decisive to round up stray nukes). His narrative strategy – memoirs, multiple viewpoint characters (including a central section dealing with the war and its tactics – Wells, author of the wargaming text Little Wars was interested in such things) – is more interesting than the usual (for his later sf) Wells’ story of society transformed from contemporary corruption and archaism (to Wells) to a utopia. King Egbert is implausibly good. “The Slavic fox” is plausibly bad and interesting. (The social prescriptions of this novel are thinner than Wells' A Modern Utopia.) There is some other prescience in this novel. Written before WWI and Woodrow Wilson’s intervention, this novel has the American president usher in the new world. Wells’ is enthusiastic about Americans saying that have a “gigantic childishness”, that they are a “simple peoples by whom the world was saved." Wells, advocator of “Free Love” seems to, in the last chapter, view sex as a young person’s distraction from the “eternal search for knowledge” (a reprise of the search for the sun mentioned in the title of the first chapter). The whole chapter is a plea to go beyond the sexual differentiation in humans (and Wells throws in one of his critiques of women and their fashions).