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    The World Set Free
    The World Set Free
    The World Set Free
    Ebook287 pages3 hours

    The World Set Free

    By Murat Ukray and H. G. Wells

    3.5/5

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    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 the Netherlands, and the despatch of the British Expeditionary Force were all justified before the book had been published six months. And the opening section of Chapter the Second remains now, after the reality has happened, a fairly adequate diagnosis of the essentials of the matter. One happy hit (in Chapter the Second, Section 2), on which the writer may congratulate himself, is the forecast that under modern conditions it would be quite impossible for any great general to emerge to supremacy and concentrate the enthusiasm of the armies of either side.


    There could be no Alexanders or Napoleons. And we soon heard the scientific corps muttering, 'These old fools,' exactly as it is here foretold.


    These, however, are small details, and the misses in the story far outnumber the hits. It is the main thesis which is still of interest now; the thesis that because of the development of scientific knowledge, separate sovereign states and separate sovereign empires are no longer possible in the world, that to attempt to keep on with the old system is to heap disaster upon disaster for mankind and perhaps to destroy our race altogether. The remaining interest of this book now is the sustained validity of this thesis and the discussion of the possible ending of war on the earth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereKitap Projesi
    Release dateApr 11, 2015
    ISBN9786155565229
    Author

    Murat Ukray

    YAZAR:MURAT UKRAYYetkinlikler:Aynı zamanda bir yazar olan ve yaklaşık genel araştırma konuları ile fizikle ve birleşik alan kramı ile ilgili 2006’dan beri kaleme aldığı yaklaşık 12 eseri bulunan Murat UKRAY, yine bunları kendi kurmuş olduğu çeşitli web siteleri üzerinden, kitaplarını sadece dijital elektronik ortamda, hem düzenli olarak yılda yazmış veya yayınlamış olduğu diğer eserleri de yayın hayatına e-KİTAP ve POD (Print on Demand -talebe göre yayıncılık-) sistemine göre yayın hayatına geçirerek okurlarına sunmayı ilke olarak edinirken; diğer yandan da, projenin SOSYAL yönü olan doğayı korumak amaçlı başlattığı "e-KİTAP PROJESİ" isimli yayıncılık sistemiyle KİTABINI KLASİK SİSTEMLE YAYINLAYAMAYAN "AMATÖR YAZARLAR" için, elektronik ortamda kitap yayıncılığı ile kitaplarını bu sistemle yayınlatmak isteyen PROFESYONEL yayıncılar ve yazarlar için de hemen hemen her çeşit kitabın (MAKALE, AKADEMİK DERS KİTABI, ŞİİR, ROMAN, HİKAYE, DENEME, GÜNLÜK TASLAK) elektronik ortamda yayıncılığının önünü açan e-YAYINCILIĞA 2010 yılı başlarından beri başlamıştır ve halen daha ilgili projeleri yürütmektedir..Aynı zamanda YAZAR KOÇLUĞU ve KUANTUM & BİRLEŞİK ANA KURAMI doğrultusunda, kişisel gelişim uzmanlığı konularında da faaliyet göstermektedir..Çalışma alanları:Köşe yazarlığı yapmak, Profesyonel yazarlık (12 yıldır), Blog yazarlığı, web sitesi kurulumu, PHP Programlama, elektronik ticaret sistemleri, Sanal kütüphane uygulamaları, e-Kitap Uygulamaları ve Yazılımları, Kişisel gelişim, Kuantum mekaniği ve Birleşik Alan teorisi ile ilgili Kuramsal ve Uygulama çalışmaları..

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    Reviews for The World Set Free

    3.5/5

    61 ratings7 reviews

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    • 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."
    • 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
      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).
    • 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.

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    The World Set Free - Murat Ukray

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