Der Luftkrieg

by H.G. Wells, Gertrud J. Klett (Translator)

Herbert George Wells, kurz H. G.Wells (1866-1946), zählt zu den interessantesten und vielseitigsten Autoren des 20. Jahrhunderts. Sein Gesamtwerk, das etwa 100 Bände umfaßt, reicht von theoretischen Schriften zur Biologie, Zeitgeschichte, Politik und Philosophie bis hin zu den Romanen und Erzählungen, die seinen Weltruhm begründeten.
Es sind dies Musterbeispiele der utopischen Literatur, Klassiker origineller Erzählkunst. Als Ahnherr der modernen Science-fiction und als einer ihrer genialsten Autoren ist H. G. Wells in die Geistesgeschichte eingegangen.
Bert Smallways wird aus seinem alltäglichen kleinen Leben in einem südenglischen Dorf plötzlich in das Scheinwerferlicht der Weltgeschichte geworfen. Mit dem Luftballon eines englischen Flugzeugpioniers und wertvollen, geheimen Plänen für die Entwicklung eines modernen Kampfflugzeuges an Bord gerät er plötzlich unter die deutschen Luftkräfte, die einen Angriff auf New York planen.
Der Luftkrieg eskaliert und wird bald zu einer weltweiten Katastrophe, ohne daß sich ein nahes Ende oder ein militärischer Sieg abzeichnet Smallways gelingt es jedoch, die Geheimpapiere dem amerikanischen Präsidenten auszuhändigen; er kehrt schließlich nach England zurück wo die moderne Zivilisation in Trümmern liegt und Anarchie herrscht...

Genres: Science Fiction, Classics, Fiction, War, Steampunk, Novels, Speculative Fiction

329 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.

He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.

More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...

http://www.online-literature.com/well...

http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

Reviews

[Dagio_maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐½

Con un avvio – per me- poco convincente, la storia prende il volo proprio quando Bert, il protagonista di questa storia, a seguito di un imprevisto, si ritrova nella cesta di una mongolfiera.

Siamo in Inghilterra nei primi anni del XX* secolo, il progresso incalza modificando drasticamente tanto la geografia dei paesaggi quanto il ritmo della vita di provincia.

Bert è il prototipo di un qualsiasi mediocre inglese (e non a caso il suo cognome è Smallways!) concentrato sulla propria quotidianità ed impassibile nei confronti di ciò che lo circonda.

Già da molto, infatti, si parla di una probabile guerra tra la Germania e gli Stati Uniti che si contendono la supremazia dei cieli con il perfezionamento della macchine volanti.
Ritrovarsi da solo ad un’altezza inaudita cambia, tuttavia, la prospettiva del suo sguardo.

Bert entra in possesso dii progetti di una nuova macchina volante e, suo malgrado, viene coinvolto in una guerra che non lo riguarda.
Così a bordo dell’aeronave tedesca Vaterland prenderà, man mano coscienza, degli orrori della guerra.

Wells immagina questa guerra aerea e usa il pretesto per fare delle considerazioni allargate sulla politica e la società.
Ho trovato, sinceramente, più interessanti le riflessioni antimilitariste e antimperialiste piuttosto che la trama in sé.

Da notare l'inquietante preveggenza di questa romanzo pubblicato nel 1908 sia per il ruolo determinante della Germania sia per il concetto di guerra mondiale.


"Bert Smallways era una di quelle volgari e piccole creature, di quelle animuccie deboli e limitate che la vecchia civiltà del principio del secolo ventesimo produceva a milioni in ogni parte del mondo. Aveva passata tutta la sua vita in strade anguste, fra case piccole al disopra delle quali non vedeva e non poteva vedere, e in una ristretta cerchia d’idee dalla quale non poteva uscire, ed era persuaso che il solo dovere dell’uomo fosse quello di cercare d’essere più svelto e più furbo degli altri uomini, di saper tirare avanti la vita e di cercar di passarla nel modo migliore e più piacevole possibile. Era insomma il vero campione degli uomini che avevan reso l’Inghilterra e l’America quello che erano."

[J.G. Keely · Rating 3 out of 5]

A remarkably progressive book, but then Wells did like his politics. His constant observation that Europeans are no more civilized than the other races of man, and no less prone to violent, dominant, cruel behavior is refreshing amongst the variety of Victorian sci fi and adventure stories I've been taking in.

However, it is rather disappointing that these comments and insights are rarely tied into the warp and woof of the narrative, but are added on as little observational essays in the voice of the abstracted narrator. It would have been much more effective if he'd found a way to demonstrate these ideas in his story--otherwise, what's the point of writing a bit of fiction in the first place when he could easily have made it into a tract?

But then, even those elements which he does manage to get into the story can be rather shoe-horned, as our main character is such an example of type that he barely possesses individuality outside of what he's meant to represent (and there can be no question of what that is, since the narrative voice reminds us with regularity); and then, after switching back and forth between essays and our representative story, he breaks off and ends the thing with an unrelated short story--the structure of the work is its greatest weakness.

However, the book has many clever spots, points of wit, insights, and a rather visceral, desperate tone maintained throughout much of the story. I admit that I was surprised that the story ends up resolving itself in a post-apocalyptic 'Dark Age' reversion right out of DeFoe's 'Journal of the Plague Year', but this outcome was just Wells' way of doom preaching that the invention of the airplane would destroy all modern society across the whole world (which might not be a bad thing, apparently).

It's always unfortunate when novelists start to turn into pamphleteers, for there was never a book that was improved by adding a digressive essay to the middle of it at the expense of a narrative-driven story about actual characters and events. Indeed, it confuses me that authors so often mistake books for pulpits, since books are, on the whole, not as tall.

[Julian Worker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gaw, Bert Smallways is on a beach when he tries to help a man remove a lady who's fainted from a balloon basket. The only problem is that Bert ends up in the basket on his own heading across The English Channel. There's some top secret aeroplane plans in the basket too. He hides them and they come in useful later.

Bert lands in Germany where he's mistaken for Butteridge the ace aviation inventor. He's invited along on an airship raid on New York that doesn't end well for anyone. Bert's airship lands heavily near Niagara Falls and he's stuck on Goat Island along with some angry German aviators who regard him as the enemy as a world air war has broken out in which many countries are attacking other countries using airships. All countries have airships but these cumbersome vehicles are quickly superseded by more nimble and speedy aeroplanes.

This book was written in 1907 and is quite prophetic given that Louis Bleriot crossed the English Channel in 1909 and Zeppelins dropped bombs on English towns such as Loughborough and Hartlepool during WWI.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The War of the Worlds" wasn't the only masterpiece that H.G. Wells wrote with the words "The War" in the title. "The War in the Air," which came out 10 years later, in 1908, is surely a lesser-known title by this great author, but most certainly, in my humble opinion, a masterpiece nonetheless. In this prophetic book, Wells not only predicts World War I--which wouldn't start for another six years--but also prophesies how the advent of navigable balloons and heavier-than-air flying craft would make that war inevitable. Mind you, this book was written in 1907, only four years after the Wright Brothers' historic flights at Kitty Hawk, and two years BEFORE their airplane design was sold to the U.S. Army for military purposes. In "The War in the Air," Wells also foresees air battles, as well as engagements between naval and aerial armadas. His gift of peering into the future is at times uncanny.

We see this worldwide war through the eyes of Bert Smallways, a not terribly bright Cockney Everyman who is accidentally whisked away in a balloon and lands in Germany right on the eve of that country's departure for war. Bert is brought on board one of the German airships, and so personally witnesses a titanic battle in the North Atlantic; the Battle of New York (in which the length of Broadway is destroyed and many buildings near downtown City Hall Park are levelled, looooong before 9/11); and the huge fight between the German and Asiatic forces over Niagara Falls. And these are just the start of Smallways' adventures. Wells throws quite a bit into this wonderful tale, and the detail, pace and characterizations are all marvelous. But this isn't just an entertaining piece of futuristic fiction; it's a highly moral one as well. The author, in several beautifully written passages, tells us of the terrible waste of war, and the horrors that it always entails. In this aspect, it would seem to be a more important work of fiction than even "The War of the Worlds." While that earlier work might be more seminal, this latter tale certainly raises more pressing issues. And those issues are just as worrisome today as they were nearly a century ago. In his preface to the 1941 edition of this book, Wells wrote: "I told you so. You damned fools..." As well he might! And it would seem that we STILL haven't learned the lessons that Wells tried to teach us so many years ago.

Perhaps, at this point, I should mention that readers of this novel will be faced with many geographical, historical and vocabulary/slang terms that they may not be familiar with. If those readers are like me, they will take the time to research all those obscure terms; it will make for a richer reading experience, as always.

I said before that this novel is a masterpiece, and yet, at the same time, it is not perfect. Wells does make some small booboos in prediction, for example. Zeppelins were not more important than airplanes in war; civilization did not collapse after World War I. He tells us that the distance from Union Square to City Hall Park is under a mile, whereas any New Yorker could tell you that it's more like two. Wells mentions that the Biddle Stairs (which were built in 1827, led from Goat Island to the base of Niagara Falls, and were demolished in 1927) were made of wood, while in fact they were made of metal and encased in a wooden shaft. But these are quibbles, and in no way detract from the quality of the work. Indeed, this is a novel that should be mandatory reading for all politicians, not to mention all thinking adults.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Читал когда-то в детстве, но в переводе, а потому и ничего не помню. Да и вряд ли советский перевод был хорош. А так-то викторианские романы мы сейчас не читаем, и зря: там простой английский народ с его простонародным английским говорком и юморком, и плавные повороты сюжета, над какими посмеивается Пинчон в "романе в работе". (Правда, главгерой тут настолько высокоразвит, что выражается вообще преимущественно междометиями.)

Вообще для "романа в работе" читать книжку о воздушных шарах, дирижаблях и махающих крыльями аэропланах очень полезно, они тут с первой страницы: наш автор этим романом явно вдохновлялся. Ну и не забываем, что характонимы тоже не Пинчон придумал, у Уэллза тут все имена говорящие, а балаганные сцены таковы, что думаешь, будто читаешь... ну да, Пинчона. Особенно когда два неудавшихся мотомеханика решают стать певческим дуэтом. А некоторые повороты сюжета так и вообще перекочевали в "Радугу" - полет на воздушном шаре над Германией, например, или пение песен с небес. И - здесь присутствует горечавка! Общее сходство также заметно в "редакционных статьях", встречающихся то и дело в романной ткани, - только у Пинчона они, конечно, гораздо безумнее, но ноги их растут примерно отсюда.

А есть и прямо-таки образы, переселившиеся в тексты Пинчона - вот, к примеру, речь о Нью-Йорке: "Its port reached to its heart like Venice, and, like Venice, it was obvious, dramatic, and proud. Seen from above it was alive with crawling trains and cars, and at a thousand points it was already breaking into quivering light."

Или вот еще прекрасная картинка: "The swaying view varied with these changes of altitude. Now they would be low and close, and he would distinguish in that steep, unusual perspective, windows, doors, street and sky signs, people and the minutest details, and watch the enigmatical behaviour of crowds and clusters upon the roofs and in the streets; then as they soared the details would shrink, the sides of streets draw together, the view widen, the people cease to be significant. At the highest the effect was that of a concave relief map..."

Актуальность тоже дает себя знать - от войны не спрячешься. Например, вот это - отнюдь не описание русских фашистских войск, бессмысленно уничтожающих украинские города, а вовсе даже германские дирижабли бомбят Бродуэй, "потому что иначе нельзя": "And so our Bert Smallways became a participant in one of the most cold-blooded slaughters in the world's history, in which men who were neither excited nor, except for the remotest chance of a bullet, in any danger, poured death and destruction upon homes and crowds below. He clung to the frame of the porthole as the airship tossed and swayed, and stared down through the light rain that now drove before the wind, into the twilight streets, watching people running out of the houses, watching buildings collapse and fires begin. As the airships sailed along they smashed up the city as a child will shatter its cities of brick and card. Below, they left ruins and blazing conflagrations and heaped and scattered dead; men, women, and children mixed together as though they had been no more than Moors, or Zulus, or Chinese. Lower New York was soon a furnace of crimson flames, from which there was no escape. Cars, railways, ferries, all had ceased, and never a light lit the way of the distracted fugitives in that dusky confusion but the light of burning. He had glimpses of what it must mean to be down there—glimpses."

Еще тут уморительная сцена починки самолета каннибальским методом - примерно как сейчас чинят весь российский авиапарк. Уэллз устами своего героя дает самый ценный для этого совет: "For the first rule in the art of repairing, as it was known to the firm of Grubb and Smallways, was to get your hands and face thoroughly and conclusively blackened." Вот что нужно сделать всем подсанкционным авиакомпаниям - и тогда все обязательно наладится.

Но про нынешний мировой пиздец он все же сказал хорошо:

It is difficult perhaps for the broad-minded and long-perspectived reader to understand how incredible the breaking down of the scientific civilisation seemed to those who actually lived at this time, who in their own persons went down in that debacle. Progress had marched as it seemed invincible about the earth, never now to rest again. For three hundred years and more the long steadily accelerated diastole of Europeanised civilisation had been in progress: towns had been multiplying, populations increasing, values rising, new countries developing; thought, literature, knowledge unfolding and spreading. It seemed but a part of the process that every year the instruments of war were vaster and more powerful, and that armies and explosives outgrew all other growing things....
Three hundred years of diastole, and then came the swift and unexpected systole, like the closing of a fist. They could not understand it was systole.
They could not think of it as anything but a jolt, a hitch, a mere oscillatory indication of the swiftness of their progress. Collapse, though it happened all about them, remained incredible. Presently some falling mass smote them down, or the ground opened beneath their feet. They died incredulous....

Ну и весь конец с его "редакционными статьями" от автора (а не его придурочного героя) там вполне прогностический. В целом же роман вполне восхитителен, хотя в военно-политической части убедителен не вполне, да и хронология там несколько спутана. Что помещает его целиком и полностью в прото-Пинчонов мир, где абсурдность и чудовищность любой войны показана совершенно отчетливо, хотя, порой, и несколько декларативно. Великом мастером слова Уэллз, в отличие от Пинчона, все-таки не был.

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The War in the Air

Though written in 1908, I don’t believe H.G. Wells wrote this because he saw the writing on the wall that WWI was to come. Too early. What inspired this was the frenzy over the invention of the flying machines. With the Right Brothers and those who followed, and the innovations with the Zeppelin, Wells knew that Napoleon-type leaders of all nations would want to perfect whatever flying contraptions they could get their hands on in order to dominate the skies, and then the world as well. This type is known as the “the violent man,” according to A.E. van Vogt, who addressed it in his 1962 novel of the same name: “The Violent Man”. These are a certain type of character that would exploit any innovation or tactic to gain absolute control. In this novel, it is a not so sane German prince.

The old Verne balloon is featured here to set the novel off, then on to the airplane and what Wells assumed would be the most dominating machine, the Zeppelin (which in this case is in the hands of the Germain prince).

All of this is told through the eyes of a bumbling British character who accidentally falls into the plot.

Eventually, “the world is at war!” as the German prince has the notion of invading America as the Asiatic nations seize the opportunity of getting into the major action, and the battle occurs over the Canadian and American border at Niagara Falls. It is from here that the story really takes off, making this one of H.G. Wells greatest works of speculative fiction.

Later in his career, he revisits much of this subject matter in a much more developed novel published in 1935 novel, “The Shape of Things to Come” where he anticipates World War II.

What a mind.

[Scholar Liis · Rating 5 out of 5]

the war was in the air fr

[Jon Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

So reading this book is a tentative start at going through some of Wells' vast catalog beyond the "Big Three" that pretty much everybody has read: The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds. I selected this one more or less at random. It is a work of speculative fiction involving a world war fought from the air. I liked the "big ideas" that Wells incorporated in the novel, but I was not crazy about the plot device he used to advance the narrative: most of the story of the war is told as seen and experienced by a Cockney bicycle dealer named Bert Smallways, who by a series of very unlikely events becomes an eyewitness to and unwilling participant in the war's opening battles.

The book was written in around 1907 (I think) just a few years after the Wright brothers pioneered heavier-than-air flight, at a time when blimps and dirigibles were still the latest word in aviation. I guess in Wells' mind the ultimate practicality of heavier-than-air flight, especially as a tool of war, was still an open question. Consequently his War in the Air is waged using fleets of dirigibles, capable of carrying loads of bombs across vast distances. As the story begins, Wells captures the real-world social and political drifts of the time that lead up to his fictional war - the nations of Europe are becoming more fervently nationalistic and jockeying for prestige and resources, while in their far-flung colonies the indigenous populations are becoming increasingly restive. The nations are engaged in an arms race, expanding their armies and navies and secretly adopting ever-more-advanced weaponry. Each nation's military is composed of professional soldiers, while the vast majority of each nation's civilian population pursues wealth and advancement and entertainment, and is completely remote and removed from war and the professional warrior class.

The war erupts when a glory-seeking German prince launches an undeclared war against the United States, sending a naval fleet and a swarm of dirigible bombers toward New York City. The raison d'etre for the attack is America's Monroe Doctrine, which is thwarting Germany's colonial ambitions. The German air fleet bombs New York into reluctant surrender, but what follows in the story is a sign of Wells' remarkable prescience: his realization that air power can cause great damage, but only boots on the ground can seize territory from an enemy and hold it. And he wrote this before there had been any significant use of aircraft of any type in warfare! The Germans in their dirigibles are too few in number to conquer New York City, which rescinds its surrender and launches a guerrilla war on the Germans. Meanwhile, war has broken out in Europe, with various nations sending their dirigible fleets against one another, wrecking the cultural and financial centers of the Continent. Next, an alliance of China, Japan, and other Asian nations jumps into the fray, sending an overwhelming air fleet across the globe, attacking America and Europe.

Under the strain and shock of this global war, the systems of international trade, communication, and finance collapse. In colonial territories, the indigenous populations rise up and overthrow their colonizers. Western civilization staggers and the next thing you know, Wells has unleashed a good old fashioned Edwardian apocalypse. Urban populations begin to starve. Law and order disappear, chaos reigns, plague breaks out, and modern men degenerate into savagery. There is even a post-apocalyptic epilogue, set 30 years after the collapse, where we learn the surviving English population is subsisting in Medieval squalor. Whew! Quite a dark turn, but no darker I suppose than The War Of The Worlds. Now I am wondering what other Wells books out there deal with The Strange Case of the End of Civilization As We Know It....four out of five stars.

[Trav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wells wrote this book five years after the Wright brothers' flight 1903, after the Japanese defeat of the Russians in 1904, but prior to Bleiriot's crossing of the Channel by air in 1909. He was therefore writing at a time of significant international change, the ultimate path of which was not clear. Though his predictions were off in some aspects, he appeared to get the big things right.

The book's thesis is, in Wells' own words:

that with the flying machine war alters in its character; it ceases to be an affair of 'fronts' and becomes an affair of 'areas'; neither side, victor or loser, remains immune from the gravest injuries, and while there is a vast increase in the destructiveness of war, there is also an increased indecisiveness. Consequently 'War in the Air' means social destruction instead of victory as the end of war. It not only alters the methods of war but the consequences of war.

His story pushes three key arguments:

(1) Air power brought the end to vicarious war: Prior to air power, war was a matter of battles between armies fought along fronts removed from the population who supported the war. The public fought "by proxy in the person of anyone who cared to enlist." With air power, however, war was no longer limited to fronts, but could be brought to the heart of the nation, and the people themselves.

(2) Air war was not decisive: Although air power could rain destruction onto a civilian populace, it could not hold the ground that it had destroyed. Accordingly, it could not be decisive in its own right. As the people of New York demonstrated; thought their mayor surrendered, the spirit of the people was not crushed, and they were able to mount of rebellion and fight on.

(3) The rise of air power saw the demise of naval power: Much is made throughout the book of the ability of the airships to cross the seas faster than the navy, as well as to easily destory the surface ships from the air. Wells asserts: "So it was that Bert Smallways saw the first flight of the airship and the final fight of those strangest of things in the whole history of war: the ironclad battleship."

Overall, it is a good read, though the full meaning of Wells' fiction-wrapped argument takes a while to really sink in.

[B. Barron · Rating 4 out of 5]

In many ways this is quite prescient, aircraft did radically change war.
My only real complaint is the prediction of the fall of the modern scientific society, so many things he thinks would have been lost (weaving fabrics, good farming practices, stuff like that) would not have been lost - Hades many of them are hobbies for the modern suburbanite and still ways of life for rural farmers and craftsmen.

Still a remarkable book, especially considering it was published years before World War I.

[❀ Virginia ❀ · Rating 3 out of 5]

— La rivedrà, — disse Bert.
— No! Non la vedrò mai più... Non capisco perché la gente deve incontrarsi per essere poi separata per sempre. Ma so che lei ed io non ci incontreremo mai più. Questo lo so con la stessa certezza con cui so che il sole sorgerà e che quella cascata continuerà a cadere scintillando sopra le rocce dopo che io sarò morto e me ne sarò andato... Oh! Ciò che gli uomini hanno fatto, ciò che faranno in avvenire, è tutta stupidità, fretta, violenza, crudele follia, stupidità, odio fallace e ambizione egoistica. Gott! Smallways, che pasticcio e che confusione è sempre stata la vita: le battaglie, i massacri e i disastri, gli odii e gli atti feroci, gli assassinii e le torture, i linciaggi e gli inganni. Questa mattina sono stanco di tutto, come se lo avessi scoperto per la prima volta: ed è stata una scoperta. Quando un uomo è stanco della vita, suppongo che sia ora per lui di morire. Ho perso il coraggio e la morte mi è vicina, mi è vicina e so che la fine deve venire. Ti ricordi tutte le speranze che mi riempivano il cuore fino a poco tempo fa, la sensazione di inizi meravigliosi... Era tutto un inganno! Non c’erano inizi... Erano soltanto formiche in formicai di città, in un mondo che non ha nessuna importanza, che continua e che va a finire nel nulla. New York... New York non mi colpisce neanche come una cosa terribile. Non era altro che un formicaio, preso a calci da un pazzo!

[Johanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Characters were a bit flat and it was hard to relate to them. I also think that made some parts a bit dry.

This was pretty slow and eventless. Some parts felt like lists of things that was happening more than an enthralling scenes. Some parts were really fun!

I loved the message of the book and the ending was good.

[Artie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first H.G. Wells book I've read. I'm not sure why it's not as famous as the others. It is a bit uneven but the good parts are very very good, and its message about technology advancing faster than morality is always timely.

[Apocryphal Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not Well's most famous work by a longshot - it's quite likely you've never even heard of it. Wells wrote The War in the Air in 1907 at a time when he was veering away from the scientific romances of his past and into more mainstream fiction. Like his earlier novels The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine this book contains a fair amount of social commentary, but unlike those, this one is couched in some fairly lengthy 'editorial' sections by the unnamed narrator that will come across as rather dry and sometimes preachy. Suffice to say that Wells was alarmed by the increase in nationalist rhetoric he was seeing around him, and this book forms part of his reaction to it.

The War in the Air postulates a near future world war, made possible by the atmosphere of fervent nationalism running wild in the various world empires, and by the sudden increase in mobility to the war departments of these nations made possible by air travel. Huge fleets or lighter-than-air ships are built - the battleships of the air - supported by rather unreliable heavier than air flying machines of variable invention that mostly get about by clumsily flapping their wings. The novel is set in the year '191-'

Please note that there are some spoilers ahead.

The story opens with two cockney brothers from Bun Hill, near the Crystal Palace in London. They're names are Bert and Tom Smallways. Tom is the more reserved of the two. He runs a shop and marvels (and laments) at the speed of change he sees in the world around him - a world of motorcycles, automobiles, and monorails and exotic fruits and vegetables from all around the world. Bert Smallways, on the other hand, is the more progressive of the two. He'll be the hero of our story. He's employed in the bicycle (here meant motorcycle) shop of a young man named Grubb, which satisfied his progressive nature. But a motorcycle accident and a fire in the early chapters of the book sets Bert and Grubb back. For a time they take to touring the countryside and singing. Meanwhile, the news headlines offer dire predictions of war, and a certain English inventor named Butteridge is making a name for himself.

All of these threads are drawn together one day as Mr Butteridge comes floating across Bert's path one day in a balloon. Mistakes are made, and before you know it Bert Smallways is carried off solo in Butteridge's balloon. He drifts across the North Sea and into northern Germany, where he eventually lands with a ruckus. The Germans assume he's Mr Butteridge himself, and since this assumption seems to be the only thing saving Bert from some German anger over the extent of property damage he created in landing the balloon, he doesn't tell them who he really is. Almost before he can say 'Gaw!', Bert finds himself in Prince Karl Albert's air flagship, the Vaterland, and heading out over the sea toward America.

It turns out the Germans have invasion plans, and almost before Bert understands what he's involved in, he witnesses a naval battle between American and German ironclads in the North Atlantic. At first this all seems like something happening remotely below, but soon it becomes obvious he's part of an air fleet, which means he's part of the action. Here we get some of the best bits of description in the book:

"Bert, craning his neck through the cabin porthole, saw the whole of that incident, that first encounter of aeroplane and ironclad. He saw the queer German Drachenflieger, with their wide flat wings and square, box-shaped heads, their wheeled bodies, and their single-man riders soar down the air like a flight of birds... One to the right pitched down extravagantly, shot steeply up into the air, burst with a loud report, and flamed down into the sea; another plunged nose forward into the water and seemed to fly to pieces as it hit the waves."

Somewhere in the book, we're told that about a third of all these heavier-than-air flying machines killed their solo pilots. Clearly, the new air force isn't the place for the faint of heart. Bert feels unsafe, even in the relative safety of the airship, though he's later dismayed to learn that a young man was shot dead by a rifle bullet, though this whole time he never realized the Vaterland had come under fire. Meanwhile, the battle rages on:

"He saw little men on the deck of the Theodore Roosevelt below, men foreshortened in plan into mere heads and feet, running out preparing to shoot at the [other Drachenflieger]. Then the foremost flying machine was rushing between Bert and the American deck, and then bang! came the thunder of its bomb flung neatly at the forward barbette and a thin little crackling of rifle shots in reply. Whack whack whack, went the quick-firing guns of the American's battery and smash came the answering shell from the Fuerst Bismarck. Then a second and third flying-machine passed between Burt and the American ironclad, dropping bombs also, and a fourth, it's rider hit by a bullet, reeled down and dashed itself to pieces and exploded between the shot-torn funnels, blowing them apart. Bert had a momentary glimpse of a little black creature jumping from the crumpling frame of the flying machine, hitting the funnel, and falling limply, to be instantly caught and driven to nothingness by the blaze and rush of explosion."

In these sections, it reads very like a comic book, right down to the sound effects.

"Smash! came a vast explosion in the forward part of the flagship, and a huge piece of metalwork seemed to lift out of her and dump itself into the sea, dropping men and leaving a gap into which a prompt Drachenflieger planted a flaring bomb. And then for an instant Bert perceived only too clearly in the growing, pitiless light a number of minute, convulsively active animalculae scorched and struggling in the Theodore Roosevelt's foaming wake. What were they? Not men - surely not men? Those drowning, mangled little creatures tore with their clutching fingers at Bert's soul."

By now, Prince Karl Albert knows that Bert isn't the famed airship inventor, Butteridge. Bert is allowed to live on the ship for the time being, but it's made clear to him that his role on the ship is now 'als ballast'. He tries to keep a low profile, especially when the Prince is angry. After leaving the sea battle behind them, the air fleet heads toward New York. Along the way, word comes that a German airman is to be disciplined for carrying matches while onboard the airship, Adler. This is extremely dangerous and there are signs posted about warning men not to carry matches. The airman pleads forgetfulness in the height of battle, but the Prince decides to make an example of him anyway.

"Bert stood on the gallery, curious to see the execution, but uncomfortable because that terrible blond Prince was within a dozen feet of him, glaring terribly, with his arms folded and his heels together in military fashion.
They hung the man from the Adler. They gave him sixty feet of rope, so that he should hang and dangle in the sight of all evil-doers who might be hiding matches or contemplating any kindred disobedience. Bart saw the man standing, a living, reluctant man, no doubt scared and rebellious enough in his heart, but outwardly erect and obedient, on the lower gallery of the Adler about a hundred yards away. Then they thrust him overboard...
Down he fell, hands and feet extended, until with a jerk he was at the end of the rope. Then he ought to have died and swung edifyingly, but instead a more terrible thing happened; his head came right off, and down the body went spinning into the sea, feeble, grotesque, fantastic, and with the head racing it in its fall."

The Vaterland heads on to New York, where at first the city surrenders, but then the American Spirit kicks up and, when reinforcements arrive from the south, the battle of New York begins. The Vaterland sustains damage and must leave the battle behind. It flies or drifts of to Labrador, where it settles down in the serene Canadian wilderness for a time. Rescue eventually comes, and the German fleet heads down to Niagara Falls, where most of the rest of the story is spun. The Germans take both sides of the river (here, for some reason, Wells refers to 'Niagara City' even though the cities on both sides of the river were called Niagara Falls at this time). By now we've learned that the whole world it at war - Paris, London, Berlin, New York, and other cities have all been fire-bombed out of existence. The 'Asiatics' (seemingly China, Japan, and India, described as advanced and industrious people who are more numerous and advanced than everyone else) have joined the fray and taken the west part of North America. There is a three-way war on for North America.

Toward the end, Bert finds himself stranded on Goat Island, the island above Niagara Falls that separates the American Falls from the Horseshoe Falls. From this island, he witnesses another aerial battle between the German fleet and the Asiatics. A crashing airship takes out the bridge, and for him there's no immediate way off. He soon discovers he isn't alone on the island - Prince Karl Albert is here as well as a German officer. Eventually, he must confront these two and find a way off the island. Wells is clearly familiar with the Falls area, and finishes this chapter with a poignant description of the Whirlpool, which lies downstream in the Niagara Gorge. This is where all kinds of debris that falls over the falls tends to collect. Wells seems to liken this to the sweep of great events:

"...The [missing] bird-faced officer was already rubbing shoulders with certain inert matter that had once been Lieutenant Kurt and the Chinese aeronaut and a dead cow, and much other uncongenial company, in the huge circle of the Whirlpool two and a quarter miles away. Never had that great gathering place, that incessant, aimless, unprogressive hurry of waste and battered things been so crowded with strange and melancholy derelicts. Round they went and round, and every day brought it's new contributions, luckless brutes, shattered fragments of boat and flying-machine, endless citizens from the cities upon the shores of the great lakes above. Much came from Cleveland. It all gathered here, and whirled about indefinitely, and over it all gathered daily a greater abundance of birds."

We follow Bert a little longer after his escape from the island, but soon it seems that Wells tires of telling the tale from Bert's perspective, and much of the rest of it is narrated as if to move it along to its point. The book ends with and epilogue, which takes us back to Tom Smallways in Bun Hill, some 30 years on, who shares his perspective on the last 30 years and the World War (which may still be being waged in some far off land) to his nephew, Teddy - Bert's youngest son. The book concludes:

"[Tom] sucked his old gums thoughtfully, and his gaze strayed away across the valley to where the shattered glass of the Crystal Palace glittered in the sun. A dim, large sense of waste and irrevocably lost opportunities pervaded his mind. He repeated his ultimate judgment upon all these things, obstinately, slowly, and conclusively, his final saying on the matter.
'You can say whay you like,' he said. 'It didn't ought ever to 'ave begin.'
He said it simply - somebody somewhere ought to have stopped something, but who or how or why were beyond all his ken."

Now, I'm sure that sounds heavy handed, but keep in mind all of this was written shortly before the First World War. Wells, in his way, foresaw air battles and the fire bombing of cities. He saw where nationalism was going.

As a pure story, The War in the Air has a lot of problems. There's far too much exposition by the narrator, and this can cause parts of the story to drag. Many of the action scenes are quite good, but I'm not convinced by Well's use of onomatopoeic words to illustrate that action - though as I said, it does put me in mind of how it's done in graphic novels.

So yes, as a novel it's flawed - but there's so much more in here than just a story! We've got a likeable everyman who gets swept up into bigger events (long before Frodo ever did), dramatic battles in the air, exotic locations, a climax on an island surrounded by deadly waterfalls, social commentary, anti-war sentiment, and some eerily accurate predictions of what was to come. As prolific SF&F author Dave Duncan says in the introduction to this edition: "Strangely, The War in the Air is not even counted among H.G. Wells's best, but coming from anyone else it would be called a masterpiece. It deserves to be better remembered."

What can I say, but that I agree!

[Francesca · Rating 1 out of 5]

So boring. Could not finish it. Shame as War of the World's is one of my favourite books if not my favourite.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much as I get frustrated by H.G. Wells and like to criticize his work, I can't help but recognize his genius. "The War In The Air" is one of his novels that I honestly can find very little to fault, and I believe stands as one of his best sci-fi novels.

As an avid consumer and fan of sci-fi from the three decades preceding the classic "Golden Age" (what has been lately and helpfully called the "Radium Age" of sci-fi), this novel encapsulates the speculation, wonder, and vision typical of this literary period. The skies are ablaze with giant mothership zepellins, bat-like ornithopters, and other strange steampunk craft in a worldwide technologic race for dominance of the air with catastrophic results. But you don't have to be a fan of these kinds of sci-fi tropes to appreciate this novel.

In particular, I was struck by the complexity of emotion that develops in the reader as reflected in the growth and changes of the main protagonist, Bert (the name being self-referential to Wells, I'm sure, who was often known as "Bertie.") Bert Smallways, a partner of a failing bicycle repair and rental shop, is not worldly or educated, and he is immature, bumbling, and clueless. But he witnesses the start of the War in the Air, and is even drafted to rub elbows with the very men who were responsible for the War. Traumatized, he gradually moves from being a cocky and self-deluded pawn to a survivor, and finally to an angry and disillusioned avenger. His transformation does reflect Wells himself as the author advanced in his career. Wells watched a world not heeding the warnings of the consequences of imperialism and nationalism and engaging in not one, but two World Wars in his lifetime. With each subsequent book he writes, you can see Wells' attitude change over the course of these events, until eventually he becomes largely dedicated to the nihilistic ideal of wiping the system clean of an infected and ignorant humanity and establishing a world government that he felt would put an end to fighting for the selfish wants of individual nation-states.

But this novel was written before his complete embrace of the controversial "Open Conspiracy," and focuses solely on the silliness of war. Wells, at this point, still sees goodness and opportunity in the world, and paints war as the destructive games of stunted children who are in control within the ranks of national elites, smashing up the lives of millions of people who just want to be left in peace. The angry tirade delivered by Bert to the German Prince who began the first battle is a rousing and emotional plea for governments to recognize the stupidity of war and how it inevitably leads to no gains for any country.

The logic Wells uses in making this point is flawed at times, as it is clear in this novel that he did not consider that war can actually be quite profitable. In this book, war only leads to frozen assets and the complete devaluation of all currency. But in other aspects, this novel does a good job showing the unexpected consequences to a nation that willfully attacks another nation with the delusion that they have a tactical advantage. In particular, Wells makes fun of the "Yellow Peril" paranoia of his day by portraying a formidable Chinese-japanese response to Western aggression as actually unexpected. He has his protagonists scratching their heads at the realization that the Yellow Peril was a "peril" after all. And Bert drives the point home further by stating that Western nations actually made the Yellow Peril a reality, that the West would have been disappointed to have it any other way, and thus pushed the Asian states to mimic Western society in technology and aggression in response to the otherwise fictional concerns over their threat to national security.

At times, the book can be a little irksome with the incessant dialogue spelled in ways to replicate Cockney and German accents, but the emotions and relationships expressed make it easy for the reader to just go with the flow. The pacing of the story also begins at a crawl, but as a whole is well executed, and employs an effective mix of humor, brutal violence, and devastating tragedy.

The overall impact is worth the read, even if you dislike Wells and his socialist and globalist politics, and I think this novel stands out as one of his best.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most memorable works by H.G. Wells balance Victorian wistfulness and modern sci-fi adventure, with a dash of dystopian foreboding. The War in the Air doesn't quite hit that sweet spot, but it comes close, with a bit of humor thrown in, at least at the beginning. I'm not much into Steampunk, but I imagine this book would be loved by devotees of that aesthetic. (I typed this review before seeing the Goodreads description, which mentions the novel as part of the "Steampunk Adventures series," so I guess that observation was accurate!)

The most remarkable thing about this novel is the weirdly accurate predictions Wells makes, not about World War I, but about World War II! A militaristic Germany would try to conquer via the air. Britain and France would respond. Germany would then turn its attention the United States. When that happened, the Asian countries would band together to attack the United States from the west. Wells predicts that these air wars would create one massive world war. Cities would be destroyed from afar, but the lack of troops on the ground would cause mostly sectarian violence as countries would be able to destroy from the air without actually being able to capture or hold onto gained territory. The result is a dystopian nightmare of constant warfare: a world-wide financial collapse, the dissolution of political borders, and roving bands of nationless and lawless gangs. Thankfully, the ultimate extent of Wells' vision didn't come true, but some of his predictions are uncanny: air bombings, a world war, the collapse of the British Empire, cities wiped out quickly, weapons of mass destruction, and the inevitable refugee crises due to endless bombing raids by surrogate air forces that are never able to control the ground.

But for all of Wells' prescient warnings, the plot is a little ridiculous and the main character is a walking stereotype whose personality changes on a dime multiple times. Bert Smallways is a bicycle repairman who accidentally topples into the hot air balloon of an inventor of flying machines. He is carried to Germany, where he is captured and taken aboard a zeppelin as Germany prepares their air invasion of the United States. He witnesses the destruction of New York City and an amazing battle at Niagara Falls, which is the highlight of the novel.

At that point, the novel begins to unravel. Wells has a tendency to create these fantastic concepts that fizzle at the end. It's like he can't sustain the momentum. The War in the Air is no different. The final third of the novel drags on and then ends rather abruptly, with Bert's final years being summarized haphazardly. Bert transforms into some type of post-apocalyptic warrior -- the details are fuzzy, but thankfully so, since such a transformation is so out-of-character as to be ridiculous.

The War in the Air was at times enjoyable and, at other times, a bit dull. It is not Wells' best by a long shot, but it's worth a read for anyone interested in early-twentieth century warfare or speculative fiction.

[Perry Whitford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in 1907 Wells saw nothing in his time 'so headlong and disturbing, so noisy and persuasive and dangerous, as the modernisations of patriotism produced by imperial and international politics'.

How right he was, which only a few short years would confirm.

He was also concerned with the military capability of the fledgling aeroplane. He saw that 'the Goddess of Change was turning her disturbing attention to the sky. The first great boom in aeronautics was beginning.'

Wells wrote this novel as a piece of speculative fiction, but you can read it now more as a history lesson, an impression strengthened because the narrative is told as such, via the clinical voice of hindsight.

It's amazing what Wells got right; but at the same respect, with WWI just a few years away, it's eqally amazing what he got wrong.

Bert Smallways is the unlikely protagonist, a kind of Edwardian Mod, not interested in a steady career, always looking for a good time, riding his proto-scooter down to Brighton at the weekends. By acquiring the plans for an airplane and a hot air ballon in an accident he ends up in Germany, a passenger on the flagship of their invasion fleet on its way to America.

Very much an 'everyman', Bert believes that the British Empire is right and good, that war is a noble pursuit. His position on the Vaterland as a spectator to the destruction of New York soon changes that belief, he becomes sickened and cringing, expressing himself in idiomatic Cockney cries of "Gaw!" and "Elp!".

Aeroplanes were of course used in WWI, but they actually played a peripheral role. As did Zeppelins, whereas balloons were useless. Wells overlooked the fact that the same technology that could be utilized to create planes could also be used to create ways to shoot then down.

He wasn't wrong about the war itself though, nor the inevitable outcome of the Kaiser's chauvinism. I particularly liked the description of the war of the airships as being 'like clouds fighting, like puddings trying to assassinate each other'.

But the book as a whole is a little too baggy and boring in places to rank with his classics.

[Hugh Ashton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I re-read this for the first time in many (40??) years, and it was surprising how much of the story, and even the individual words, had stuck in my memory. However, being somewhat older, and possibly wiser, than the first time that I read it, I was surprised by how well it relates to contemporary society.

It was written in 1907, and I have a feeling, from the Preface written by the author, that Mr. Wells himself was somewhat taken by surprise by certain elements of the work (chiefly the development of aerial warfare and the aggressive nature of the Germans). Of course, the mechanical technical details were somewhat inaccurate in their predictions – aerial aircraft carriers never assumed the strategic importance that he assumed they would, and dirigibles never appeared in the quantities that he predicted (he seriously underestimated the material requirements and the skills needed to produce them).

But there is one very important point that he makes that was completely ignored by the Douhets, Balbos and Billy Mitchells of the inter-war period - the fact that although a technologically advanced nation can destroy at long range, it cannot rule the lands it has conquered. Not only did the strategists mentioned above (and 'Bomber' Harris and Curtis LeMay in WWII) ignore this fact, choosing instead to believe that destruction of cities would automatically break the will of the bombed countries, but it is still ignored today. Death by remote control (drone-launched missiles and armoured helicopter gunships) can still be trumped by "asymmetric warfare" - as Wells points out, and serves only to inflame the bombed against the bombers.

As to the fragility of modern civilisation, his chilling conclusion still has power to make us think - whether we agree with his conclusions or not. Certainly there seems to be a very vocal section of American society that appears to believe it is worth preparing for the imminent breakdown of our society.

A book well worth reading for the lessons it can still teach us.

[Dave Creek · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems H.G. Wells may have written the first steampunk novel — at least, that’s how THE WAR IN THE AIR reads nowadays. The book starts off as the comic adventures of a “bicycle engineer,” Bert Smallways, and his efforts to avoid bankruptcy and to woo his love, Edna.

Though a series of rather unbelievable plot twists, Burt ends up aboard an airship that is part of a German airship fleet setting out to attack New York City. The book takes a more serious turn here, both in relation to what happens to Burt and in the overall tone. It often alternates between Burt’s plot-oriented narrative and Wells’ ideas of the importance of air power.

Much of the book is prophetic, although Wells assumed airships rather than planes would dominate the skies. And he also predicts the paradox of air warfare — you can attack your enemy, kill much of the population, and destroy his ability to make war — but you can’t occupy his land. That still takes “boots on the ground.”

One warning — the book reflects the racial attitudes of the time and has some offensive language. I’m disappointed in Wells — I thought he was more progressive than that.

This is one of his books I’d always heard of but never read — I found it as part of a $2.99 Kindle collection, THE H.G. WELLS COLLECTION. It contains all his best-known works such as THE TIME MACHINE, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE INVISIBLE MAN, and many more, as well as his more obscure works, including many that are not science fiction. I’ll be dipping into this volume much more.

You can find it through this link: http://amzn.to/1eRzwVy

[Zachary · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you like H.G. Well's you might like it...

This was the last of H.G. Wells's books that I read. It was written a decade before World War I and portrays an ill-conceived and indecisive war that delves every civilization on earth into the dark ages (literally, all modern luxuries like automobiles, trains, and electricity cease to exist after a few months of war). The actual narrative is pretty far-fetched and the whole narrative tends to harangue you by the end of it. At least War of the Worlds, Time Machine, etc. didn't beat you over the head with its messages. Then again, it was always H.G. Wells's message which interested me far more than his story-telling.

Because it's message was so straightforward (and dark) it really made me consider the possibility that war was perhaps the greatest evil known to man as it could destroy everything that civilization has achieved thus far. Simultaneously, it made me consider just how risky it was to place so much power in the hands of so few men (i.e. in government) because they just might squander it and ruin the fun for everybody. It is so ironic that one of the greatest Socialist writers led me to Libertarianism...

[Nate Huston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable, especially in light of recent assignments. Very prescient observations regarding technology and warfare. Basic proposition is a warning regarding what might happen when technology (especially in realm of military-use) outpaces society/mankind's ability to adapt. Also paints a very vivid picture of the detachment of "air warriors" who can rain (is that the correct spelling here?) destruction from on high with very little risk to themselves. Sticks in a rather compelling argument for the inability of airpower to win war decisively/alone.

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most intelligent envisaging writer , before thefirst world war 1914 he predicted about the war and the consequences. How could someone think about it historian say he used to be updated on science and the invention but he was brilliant ahead of his time 100 yrs or even more

There are many books of his books which does this, time machine , invisible ,things to come when he was 70 realsed in 1936.

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

Uncannily accurate predictions and analyses of the unstable social fabric of an imagined early twentieth century which is rather too much like our current society.

Sometimes a slog to read, but overall interesting.

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another of Wells' early science fiction masterpieces, The War in the Air chronicles the 'adventures' of Londoner Bert Smallways in a war time flying machine...

[Glass River]

The War in the Air has been overshadowed for posterity by the more filmable, and less futuristically plausible, The War of the Worlds and The Shape of Things to Come. This ‘scientific romance’ (as Wells called it) is more genuinely prescient – eerily so, in fact.
The narrative sets its scene obliquely, in the manner of Kipps and The History of Mr Polly. The hero, we apprehend, is another one of Wells’ trademark ‘little men’:
Bert Smallways was a vulgar little creature, the sort of pert, limited soul that the old civilisation of the early twentieth century produced by the million in every country of the world. He had lived all his life in narrow streets, and between mean houses he could not look over, and in a narrow circle of ideas from which there was no escape.
One relaxes, looking forward to another dose of the familiar Wellsian comedy. Bert, a handy young fellow in his small way, helps run a cycle-repair business in Bun Hill (transparently Wells’ hometown, Bromley). Wells, like other political commentators, saw the ‘bike’ as an instrument of proletarian liberation. Cycling clubs were, in historical fact, one of the foundation elements in the emergence of the Independent Labour Party. Wells’ time machine, closely observed, is a bicycle with science-fiction knobs on.
There is no grand future for Bert’s business, alas, which goes bust. By a complicated sequence of comic disasters he finds himself soaring into the upper atmosphere in a balloon. It belongs to a Mr Butteridge, who has invented the flying machine of the future – a monoplane capable of manoeuvre, something that the airship (effectively a balloon with a propeller) can’t do. Wells, as he admitted, was inspired by the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight in 1903 and Bleriot’s monoplane with which he would cross the Channel a few months after The War in the Air was published. Bert’s balloon drifts him deep into Germany, where, under the bellicose Kaiser, a huge aerial navy is preparing a sneak attack on the United States, prefatory to colonising the whole of South America. Bert finds himself a passenger on the Prussian aerial armada – an unwilling, and uncomprehending, witness to what will be the greatest war in human history.
After a ruthless bombardment of New York, America hoists the white flag. But Germany’s triumph is short-lived. Enter the massed aerial forces of the Orient, the Sino-Japanese axis, who have been building in secrecy an even greater, and more sophisticated, aerial navy. Thus, the ‘Yellow Peril’ is now airborne and invincible. The various imperial powers combat each other to mutual extermination. The world is returned to pre-industrial, pre-imperial medievalism. Bert Smallways survives and is reunited with his ‘girl’, Edna – a little man in a little world:
From that time forth life became a succession of peasant encounters, an affair of pigs and hens and small needs and little economies and children, until Clapham and Bun Hill and all the life of the Scientific Age became to Bert no more than the fading memory of a dream. He never knew how the War in the Air went on, nor whether it still went on . . . They lived and did well, as well was understood in those days. They went the way of all flesh, year by year.
On the eve of the Second World War’s Blitz on London, Wells authorised an ominous republication of the novel, with the bitter preface:
Here in 1941 The War in the Air is being reprinted once again. It was written in 1907 and first published in 1908. It was reprinted in 1921, and then I wrote a preface which also I am reprinting. Again I ask the reader to note the warnings I gave in that year, twenty years ago. Is there anything to add to that preface now? Nothing except my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: ‘I told you so. You damned fools.’ (The italics are mine.)
Wells lived through the Blitz and survived to witness the dropping of the first atomic bombs. Then he died.

[Lloyd Earickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a reread, but I first read HG Wells’ The War in the Air in the sixth grade and have only thought of it occasionally since then, so in many ways this felt like reading it for the first time after having read a brief summary or blurb about the book.  Especially since it turns out that either my memory of that first read-through isn’t very good, I didn’t understand as much of the nuance and cynicism in the book as I thought I did in the sixth grade, or a little of both.  Where I remembered a somewhat ominous and surprisingly accurate foretelling of aerial warfare in conflicts to come, The War in the Air is more a blistering indictment of industry, patriotism, and the “common man” presented through the lens of an expanding global conflict based around airship technology.

Like all prophecies, real events in the twentieth century followed elements of The War in the Air, but in twisted sorts of ways.  The book is usually linked to the first world war, but in my view it more closely predicts World War II, with its extensive bombing campaigns and the way war twisted and changed as a result.  Wells predicts the way fleets of bombers will make countries once guarded by oceans vulnerable to surprise attacks; the way bombing in the time before precision munitions, and given the increased salience of industry to warfare, would lead to the destruction of urban centers and the increased vulnerability of civilian populations to collateral damage and terror-bombing campaigns; the role of fighters to protect slower and more vulnerable bombers; even the strategic weakness of air forces – that is, their inability to hold territory.  These broad predictions are more relevant than the details which Wells tends to get distractingly wrong, like the dominance of airships instead of heavier-than-air craft, or the development of flapping-wing type flyers.  However, like much of Wells’ science fiction, the story is less about what was at the time a science fiction rendering of aerial warfare and more about a social commentary and critique on his contemporary civilization.

This commentary is conveyed, sometimes explicitly, by the book’s third person omniscient narrator, who takes a rather dim view of the protagonist, Bert.  Even Bert’s last name, Smallways, seems deliberately chosen to diminish him.  He’s depicted as something of a bumbling conman, unthinking and uncaring about the state of nations, the world, his place in it, or anything else with which the narrator believes he ought to concern himself.  What can be read as his innocence in the book’s early chapters is conveyed more like ignorance, even idiocy, and his ineptitude is what leads him into a position from which the reader can appreciate the advent of aerial warfare and the attendant destructive spiral, which we will address in somewhat more detail in a forthcoming post, which will definitely contain spoilers.  In the narrator’s view, Bert is both a victim of the broken and immoral systems in which he lives, and contemptible for his complacency within it.  Perhaps this implicit belief in the brokenness and unredeemability of both the systems and the individuals helps grant the author and reader permission for the destruction which is forthcoming.

For, though the narrator makes some gestures to the human toll and tragedy attendant to the war in the air, the downward spiral precipitated by the first battles is holistically depicted with a kind of solemn glee, as of someone who wouldn’t do it himself, and deplores the costs, but who thinks it perhaps for the best that everything burn down.  The story’s conclusion endorses this interpretation, for while the narrator never really comes to approve of Bert or his type of person, they and their existences are depicted far more favorably after the novel’s main action concludes.  It’s less that the narrator endorses the state of affairs which arises as a consequence of the war in the air, and more that he finds it less abhorrent, more natural, and more fulfilling than the status quo antebellum.

Apparently, Wells is often accused of racism in The War in the Air, which I think is a misreading.  Some of the characters certainly are, but to take the ostensibly racist statements made by the narrator at face value is to miss the narrator’s fundamental cynicism.  Rather than mindlessly echoing such sentiments, it seems the narrator repeats them in order to highlight how preposterous they are.  Nor is the division of the world into the East and West for the core of the conflict either a racist reflection or an unreasonable extrapolation for the time.  The terminology certainly reads as antiquated, but a modern reader familiar with the Chinese-Japanese conflict in the second world war misses how that animosity evolved over the decades intervening between this novel’s publication and the onset of that later war.  Besides, the book’s critique is primarily focused on nationalism, and touches upon racism only insofar as it is related to nationalism or statism (and remember, the United States and a few other countries are quite anomalous in that there is a minimal ethnic component to their national identities; nation-states traditional build their identities around a certain degree of shared ethnicity).  I’m not suggesting there is no hint of racism in the book, but I do not believe it is as egregious, nor the narrator as approving or ignorant of its harms, as critics decry.

Despite Wells’ pessimism, humanity survived its first great “war in the air,” and it survived the Cold War with its threats of global nuclear conflict which followed.  With hindsight and given how far technology and culture have moved beyond what is depicted in this novel, it can be tempting to put The War in the Air aside as simply a product of its time, a curiosity with little relevance today.  Unlike The Island of Doctor Moreau or some of Wells’ other science fiction novels, there is not an implicit or explicit message warning about the general dangers of science misapplied or of scientific progress run rampant without heed to morality or consequence.  It reads more specifically than that, and its social critiques can also be dismissed as specific to early twentieth century Europe (and particularly Britain).  However, to do so misses an opportunity, not just to read a rather fascinating and well-composed novel of classic science fiction, but to witness a vision of what might have been, and to reflect upon the critiques Wells offers and how they might apply or not apply today.  In fact, it may be more useful now, with a bit of distance, than it was in its own day, for science fiction is often at its best when the distance it gives allows us to consider difficult questions which we might otherwise be inclined to dismiss.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published: 1908
Genre: Science Fiction / Military Fiction / Dystopia

H.G. Wells’s The War in the Air is a prophetic and satirical novel that explores the dawn of aerial warfare and its catastrophic implications for modern civilization. Published in 1908—years before aircraft became a major force in global conflict—the novel reveals Wells’s uncanny foresight and his deep skepticism about unchecked technological advancement and imperial ambition.

Plot Overview
The story follows Bert Smallways, a hapless bicycle repairman from Kent, who becomes an accidental participant in a global war after being swept away in a prototype airship. Through Bert’s eyes, readers witness the eruption of a worldwide conflict driven by new airship technology, culminating in the collapse of major powers and the disintegration of civilization itself. The narrative shifts from comic misadventure to grim social commentary as the scope of destruction grows.

Themes and Analysis
At its core, The War in the Air is a cautionary tale. Wells uses satire and irony to critique nationalism, militarism, and the blind faith in technological progress. The book questions the wisdom of applying new inventions to old-world rivalries and suggests that humanity's tendency toward destruction may outpace its moral and political maturity.

Wells was particularly interested in the transformative power of flight—both in its potential and its danger. He foresaw a future where the sky becomes a new battlefield, and the nation-states of Earth, unprepared for such rapid change, implode under the weight of their own aggression.

Style and Reception
The tone of the novel alternates between light-hearted farce and stark dystopia. Bert’s ordinary, often bumbling character adds a relatable and human perspective to the large-scale events unfolding around him. However, the pacing can be uneven, and modern readers may find the dialogue and prose dated in places. Nonetheless, the novel’s prescience and thematic depth remain impressive.

When first released, The War in the Air was received as both thrilling speculative fiction and biting social critique. It has since gained recognition as one of Wells’s more politically driven works—less fantastical than The Time Machine or The Invisible Man, but no less powerful.

Conclusion
The War in the Air stands as a sobering reflection on technological advancement and global politics. Though written over a century ago, its warnings about the dehumanizing effects of mechanized war and the fragility of civilization resonate strongly today. H.G. Wells once again proves himself not just a storyteller of the future, but a thinker deeply concerned with the course of humanity.

For readers of classic science fiction, political satire, or early speculative war literature, this novel is a compelling—and disturbingly relevant—read.

[Betawolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is perhaps the clearest example of Wells' prophetic powers that I've read. In it, he correctly predicts (in thrust, if not all details) the invention of aerial warfare, the outbreak of the First World War and the Indian Revolution. Writing as he did in 1907, before even the English Channel was crossed by air, this is a truly extraordinary achievement.

The novel focuses on one Bert Smallways, a bicycle engineer from Bun Hill who is accidentally caught up in a balloon belonging to an inventor, and strays into a secret German air fleet as it heads accross the Atlantic to seize New York, thus heralding the opening shots of a world war. The tale begins a little slowly, with some time spent building up Bert's background while the scene of the world is set, but becomes more adventurous and gripping as it goes on, and the early chapters are well worth wading through.

The book is riddled with insight. Wells rails against the education system which made Bert believe he was the better of any Subject Races, comments on America's inexperience with war in their own land (with a passage regarding the attack on New York that seems to a modern reader to aptly describe that city's reaction to the Twin Towers attack), predicts the problems which lead to the Blitz and highlights above all the dreadful economic impact of war, warning of an apocalyptic collapse of civillisation.

Not everything he wrote hit, of course. Japan and China didn't fuse into Eastasia; the monorail didn't come to dominate transport, and while Wells broadly predicted the political will behind the First World War, his description of the actual combat is more applicable to the Second. But from the position he wrote, what he _did_ get right is truly staggering, and all that he wrote differently was certainly possible, and it's amusing to consider this future history as an alternative history.

The other Wells books I've read this year have been somewhat political. While the anti-war sentiment inherent in the story is arguably political, the story focuses mostly on things which have already happened, and so becomes less something which you have to agree or disagree with, heightening the sense of escapism. I'll close with the 1941 preface to this book, which struck me as truly something stirring.

HERE in 1941 The War in the Air is being reprinted once again.
It was written in 1907 and first published in 1908.
It was reprinted in 1921, and then I wrote a preface which also I am reprinting.
Again I ask the reader to note the warnings I gave in that year, twenty years ago.
Is there anything to add to that preface now? Nothing except my epitaph.
That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: "I told you so. You _damned_ fools."

[Joe Faust · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Good: This is easily Wells' most prescient novel. Just five years after the Wright Brothers' first flight, he envisioned that the next war would take place in the air, fought primarily with Zeppelin-type airships along side of crudities that we would come to know today as fighters or bombers.

But Wells' insights don't stop there. He saw Germany as the primary troublemakers and antagonists, with Japan coming into the battle from the east - a full four years before this would all come to pass (and 32 before it would all roil up again).

We see this largely (though Wells does cut away for a chapter to give us a Cliff Notes description of the war and its battles) through the eyes of a hapless Brit, a failure in life who, bumbling his attempts at making a living, turns out to be the right person in the wrong place. This, and a bizarre case of mistaken identity, make him an eyewitness - mostly - to the global catastrophe that in the future we would come to label a World War.

The Bad: Interestingly enough, Wells also saw air warfare as a cataclysmic event into which literally every nation had a stake - a true world war - and that this would have apocalyptic consequences for everyone involved, leading to global societal breakdown and a continuation of brushfire wars without end, amen. Okay, that was a miss, but in a way he presaged the tradition of Dire Consequences Of Unchecked Technology [TM] that haunts us to this day.

The Ugly: Beginning with the novel First Men in the Moon, Wells fell into the habit of beginning his novels with extended backstories of his characters that push the beginnings of these tales into tedium, and it continues with this novel. We meet our hapless protagonist, learn about the failures in his life, his attempts to make a living, and his finding of a true love before literally being carried off into a global maelstrom. In this case we also get an extended, didactic epilog as well. But between those nitpicks is an engaging story that I found fascinating because of the entirely too-accurate insights that Wells put into this story.

THE SCIENCE FICTION OF H.G. WELLS RANKED
(an ongoing list)
#1 - The War of the Worlds (1898)
#2 - The Invisible Man (1897)
#3 - Food of the Gods (1904)
#4 - War in the Air (1908)
#5 - The Wonderful Visit (1895)
#6 - The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
#7 - The Time Machine (1895)
#8 - The First Men in the Moon (1901)
#9 - In The Days of the Comet (1906)

Next: When the Sleeper Awakes (1910)