We usually don’t review fiction books, but this one deserves an exception. H. G. Wells wrote the book in 1913 and published it in 1914, and his visions of the future are quite amazing. A central part of the story is the discovery and application of nuclear energy for “aeroplanes” and other transportation vehicles. An “atomic riveting gun” is even mentioned. Wells uses the terms “radio-activity” and “atomic bombs” frequently. The bombs are a key part of the story. The major population centers are destroyed by atomic bombs, and mankind has little choice but to rebuild a more peaceful world. Wells was obviously keeping up with research of the atom by renowned physicists of the day to get material for the book. He dedicates the book to Frederick Soddy, who had written a paper about radium.
The Prelude begins with man at “…the onset of his terrestrial career…” and we find him struggling to survive by making crude weapons and using fire and beasts of burden. Reading it made me wonder if the author of “Space Odyssey 2001” had read this book. Early man “…fled the cave bear over the rocks full of iron ore and the promise of a sword and spear; he froze to death over a ledge of coal…” Of course a few of the strongest and smartest survived and began to thrive. The author attributes this accomplishment to what is explained in the sentence, “Man began to think.” Not all was perfect, because man and his tribes invested centuries of history in warring against others. Many inventions, such as gunpowder, were intended to gain an advantage in wars. Still, at the end of the nineteenth century, “The sober Englishman …could sit at his breakfast table, decide between tea from Ceylon or coffee from Brazil, devour an egg from France and some Danish ham, or eat a New Zealand chop, wind up his breakfast with a West Indian banana, (and) glance at the latest telegrams…”
A professor named Rufus was giving lectures on radium and radio-activity and described how radium was “…breaking up and flying to pieces.” Rufus mentions uranium and thorium and describes that “…the atom…is really a reservoir of immense energy.” He goes on to describe how in fourteen ounces of the element uranium “…slumbers a least as much energy as we could get by burning a hundred and sixty tons of coal.” He continues to explain that that a sudden release of the energy “…would blow us and everything around us to fragments; … (or) keep Edinburgh brightly lit for a week.” He then proposes driving giant battleships or liners and predicts that “man’s material destiny” will be changed forever.
The book predicts that scientists will be inspired by men such as Rufus and will introduce atomic energy in 1933. It will power everything. France alone will have thirty thousand “atomic aeroplanes” by 1943. Gold becomes worthless because it is a waste product of the “disintegration of heavier elements.” There is no longer a need for coal miners and many other trades and crafts. Economic disruptions create massive unemployment and the suicide rate quadruples.
The book shifts to describing an autobiographical novel “Wander Jahre” by Frederick Barnet that will be published about forty years in the future (1970). That book describes Barnet’s experiences in the war that follows the many disruptions of society caused by the advent of atomic energy. He was an officer in the English infantry and writes of watching the flight of atomic aeroplanes. He comments about the wonders of London without smoke because of the use of atomic energy.
The advent of atomic energy and the massive rates of unemployment apparently make conflict inevitable. A typist working in a Paris military command center becomes aware that something in the world was changing. Searchlights were on and there was a surge of great excitement. There was a “…kind of throbbing…about her blew something like the wind…” Then there was a sound like thunder that “…struck her like a blow…She saw three black shapes swooping down through the torn clouds, and from a point a little below two of them had already started curling tails of red…There is a vivid description of what happened as the world then seemed torn apart. There is “a great ball of crimson-purple fire like a maddened living thing…chaos of falling masonry that seemed to be attacking the earth furiously, that seemed to be burrowing into it like a blazing rabbit…”
A French aviator told his second in command, “Now nothing on earth to stop us going to Berlin and giving them tit-for-tat.” He flew his atomic powered plane to Berlin while his companion sat above the container holding three atomic bombs. The description of the bombs, how they were armed, and the attempts of other atomic powered aeroplanes carrying snipers trying to shoot them down with rifles are quaint. The “…bomb-thrower lifted the big atomic bomb from the box…It was a black sphere two feet in diameter.” It had a little celluloid stud that “…he had to bite to let the air in upon the inductive.” He hoisted the bomb over the side and whispered “Round” as he dropped it. “The bomb flashed blinding scarlet in mid-air and fell, a descending column of blaze eddying spirally in the midst of a whirlwind.” It created a crater of a small volcano. He armed and dropped the second bomb, armed the third bomb, and it exploded as he was holding it.
The atomic bombs were fueled by “Carolinum” and were activated by “admitting air to the inductive” by biting off the celluloid cover. The Carolinum “…which at once became active and set up radio-activity in the outer layer of the Carolinum sphere…in a few minutes the bomb was blazing continual explosion.” Chemists had determined that the “…half period” (half life) was seventeen days; that is to say it poured out half the huge store of energy in its great molecules in the space of seventeen days, the next seventeen days emission was a half of that first period’s outpouring, and so on.” The use of atomic bombs in warfare increased the power to destroy, but there “…was no increase whatever in the ability to escape.”
The war that follows results in every major city on earth and major points of infrastructure, such as Holland’s sea dikes, being atomic bombed. The continuing atomic reaction of the bombs and the clouds of radioactivity prevented reentry into any of the bombed areas. The devastation drives surviving leaders to form a world government and lock away remaining atomic bombs.
The last chapter is strange. It abandons predictive science fiction to describe a deformed dignitary named Marcus Karenin who is taken to Tibet for surgery. Karenin meets a popular poet named Kahn and has lengthy conversations about the Dawn of Love, man’s preoccupation with sex, and the emancipation of women. It seemed a quite strange way to end the book.