Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Wells, H.G.. The World Set Free - A Story of Mankind. E.P. Dutton & Co. - New York, 1914.
Price: US$95.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Dark maroon cloth on boards with gilt lettering to front and spine, somewhat faded to both. Book is tight, square, sharp-cornered and free of major flaws or markings inside and out. Book is Very Good. Alas no DJ but supposed First Edition, First Printing with no other dates or indications to title page or copyright page other than 1914. Though Wells' novel Tono-Bungay is not a science-fiction novel, radioactive decay plays a small but consequential role in it. Radioactive decay plays a much larger role in The World Set Free, a book dedicated to Frederick Soddy who would receive a Nobel for proving the existence of radioactive isotopes. This book contains what is surely Wells's biggest prophetic "hit", with the first description of a nuclear weapon (which he termed "atomic bombs"). Scientists of the day were well aware that the natural decay of radium releases energy at a slow rate over thousands of years. The rate of release is too slow to have practical utility, but the total amount released is huge. Wells's novel revolves around an (unspecified) invention that accelerates the process of radioactive decay, producing bombs that explode with no more than the force of ordinary high explosivesbut which "continue to explode" for days on end. "Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century, than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible . [but] they did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands". In 1932, the physicist and conceiver of nuclear chain reaction Leó Szilárd read The World Set Free (the same year Sir James Chadwick discovered the neutron), a book which he wrote in his memoirs had made "a very great impression on me." In 1934, Szilárd took his ideas for a chain reaction to the British War Office and later the Admiralty, assigning his patent to the Admiralty to keep the news from reaching the notice of the wider scientific community. He wrote, "Knowing what this [a chain reaction] would meanand I knew it because I had read H. G. WellsI did not want this patent to become public."
Seller: Barberry Lane Booksellers, Bar Harbor, ME, U.S.A.
Price: US$109.03 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 1p adverts at end; 308pp. orig. brown cloth, slight wear on extremities,
Seller: R.G. Watkins Books and Prints, Ilminster, SOMER, United Kingdom
WELLS, H.G.. The World Set Free. E.P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1914.
Price: US$125.00 + shipping
Description: First American edition, octavo, original brown woven cloth over boards, gilt stamped text on front cover and spine. A utopian novel concerning a future war, from prolific English author Herbert George Wells. Very Good; light shelf wear, slight discoloration of cloth in a few spots, green stripe on bottom edge.
Seller: Yesterday's Gallery, ABAA, East Woodstock, CT, U.S.A.
WELLS, H. G.. The World Set Free, A Story of Mankind. E.P. Dutton & Company, New york, 1914.
Price: US$150.00 + shipping
Description: First American Edition, Octavo, publisher's brown cloth over boards, gilt stamped lettering on front cover and spine. Concerning anticipation of future devistations such as an atomic bomb, from prolific English writer Herbert Geroge Wells. Very good light shelf wear, private library embossed stamp of front free endpaper + half title.
Seller: Yesterday's Gallery, ABAA, East Woodstock, CT, U.S.A.