Talk:The World Set Free

message: "No bomb could "explode continuously" without destroying itself."
Well, the sun does it. Let's hope our grandchildren continue to remain as skeptical about this possibility. -- 3 january 2005
      Explosions occur "on" the Sun. I mean when sun explodes chances are high our grandchildren won't be skeptical about it at all. However I personally loved Wells nuclear bomb, and wrongly intrepeted as releasing high doses of radiation instead of exploding. -- 20 1 06
Well and explosion is usually defined as a violent and rapid expansion, often including some sort of shock wave.  The sun is continuously undergoing fusion, but I wouldn't describe it as continuously exploding. - tonyB, march 2008  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.47.143.136 (talk) 06:27, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: No Bomb

message: Seems borderline-promotional to me. It's not contemporary with the book and the artwork reflects a modern interpretation of the subject matter. I guess I'll accept it as long as it's kept down to a reasonable size, and as long as we don't have an image of the original cover art. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:10, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  That cover image 

message: I don't think so. Used bookseller abebooks shows numerous listings of "The World Set Free," published by E. P. Dutton & Co, New York, 1914  . It has no listings for any book by H. G. Wells entitled "The Last War."
A search of the Cornell University online catalog  shows 286 titles by H. G. Wells, none entitled "The Last War" or anything like it. "Labour Wars," "Last Books of H. G. Wells," "Little Wars."
The link to the University of Nebraska Press does not link to that book and currently the site appears to be giving nothing but error messages in response to searches.  Seems to be working now.
Ah. OK, I've got it. This appears to be a modern reprint, published in 2001. The title is "The Last War: A World Set Free," not "The Last War." It does not seem to have been published in 1914 under that name. I can't determine, either from the Amazon or the UNP website, why the title was changed. Perhaps Bear explains it in the introduction. Anyone know? Did they just want a spiffier title, or was this title Wells wanted, or is this an earlier, previously-unpublished version, or what? Dpbsmith (talk) 15:52, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Published in the U. S. as 'The Last War???'" 

message: The tone in the article is needlessly conversational and, it seems to me, judgmental vis-a-vis the work.  It would be one thing if we were citing published criticism of the work, but it reads to me like I'm reading the Opinion Of Wikipedia, which is inappropriate.  Nandesuka 13:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV Check 

message: In the book, is not the Modern State the worldwide state that arises on the wreckage after the Last War? The article says that the Modern State was the one that cause the war. Perhaps a better way to phrase that paragraph would be 'In his day, Wells viewed war as the inevitable result of modern technology combined with old ways of thinking."
Komiksulo (talk) 16:38, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modern State NOT cause of war in book? 

message: I think it rather odd that a book generate so much discussion of its influence, yet there is no summary of the plot. 
Pschroeter (talk) 22:04, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Someone please do a plot summary 

message: Hi, fellow wikipedians!
Since I have edited both the Leó Szilárd and H. G. Wells pages, I thought I might post my findings here too. There are no clear accounts I know of how Szilárd exactly was inspired by the book. These are the quite interesting parts in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Richard Rhodes, 1987):
page 24:
"Just then, in 1932, Szilard found or took up for the first time that appealing orphan among H. G. Wells' books  that he had failed to discover before: The World Set Free."
page 24:
"Yet The World Set Free influenced Szilard less than its subject matter might suggest. "This book made a very great impression on me, but I didn't regard it as anything but fiction. It didn't start me thinking of whether or not such things could in fact happen. I had not been working in nuclear physics up to that time"."
page 266:
"After Bohr's arrival Szilard traveled down from New York to visit his sick friend and won a long-overdue surprise: "Wigner told me of Hahn's discovery. Hahn found that uranium breaks into
two parts when it absorbs a neutron.... When I heard this I immediately saw that these fragments, being heavier than corresponds to their charge, must emit neutrons, and if enough neutrons are emitted  ...  then it should be, of course, possible to sustain a chain reaction. All the things which H. G. Wells predicted appeared suddenly real to me.""
page 331: 
"Something other than Briggs' penurious methodology triggered a new burst of activity from Szilard. He had spent the winter preparing a thorough theoretical study, "Divergent chain reactions in systems composed of uranium and carbon" - divergent in this case meaning chain reactions that continue to multiply once begun (the document's first footnote, numbered zero, cited  "H. G. Wells, The World Set Free [1913]")."
This information is quite interesting, but from this I can only draw the conclusion that Szilárd read the book in 1932 and that he was impressed by it, no more, no less. Regards, --Dna-Dennis (talk) 03:52, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Leó Szilárd]], again