WELLS, H.G.
The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind.
New York: E.P. Dutton & Company , 1914.
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"So long as you are alive you are just the moment, perhaps, but when you are dead then you are all your life from the first moment to the last": First American edition of H.G. Well's The World Set Free
First American edition of Wells’ prophetic novel predicting the arrival of atomic weaponry. Octavo, original publisher's cloth. In good condition. Reinforcement to the front hinge.
Based on Wells' pre-WWII prediction of a more destructive and uncontrollable sort of weapon than the world had yet seen, The World Set Free first appeared in serialized form with the title A Prophetic Trilogy. A frequent theme of Wells's work, as in his 1901 nonfiction book Anticipations, was the history of humans' mastery of power and energy through technological advance, seen as a determinant of human progress. Wells's knowledge of atomic physics came from reading William Ramsay, Ernest Rutherford, and Frederick Soddy; the last discovered the disintegration of uranium. Soddy's book Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt praises The World Set Free. Wells's novel may even have influenced the development of nuclear weapons, as the physicist Leó Szilárd read the book in 1932, the same year the neutron was discovered. In 1933 Szilárd conceived the idea of neutron chain reaction, and filed for patents on it in 1934.
The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind.
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