Prophesying atomic warfare, Wells imagines a world devastated and then remade after the discovery of nuclear energy.
Books mentioned in The World Set Free (3)
The Interpretation of Radium by Frederick Soddy: “TO Frederick Soddy's 'Interpretation Of Radium' This Story, Which Owes Long Passages To The Eleventh Chapter Of That Book, Acknowledges And Inscribes Itself”
The Golden Bough by James George Frazer: “the proper text-book for kings, Firmin... it is old Fraser's Golden Bough”
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “It is indeed an allusive title, carrying the world back to the _Wilhelm Meister_ of Goethe, a century and a half earlier.”