The War in the Air

Abstract

The War in the Air was written in 1907, serialised in the Pall Mall Magazine commencing in January 1908, and published in book form later in that year. This was before any extensive use of the flying machine—Bleriot did not cross the Channel until July 1909—and the story is thus not only a remarkable forecast of the use of airships in warfare but also a striking anticipation of the way in which techniques of war would be changed by the introduction of the aeroplane for military purposes. Wells regarded it as a ‘fantasia of possibility’ and as one of a series of books, including When the Sleeper Wakes and The World Set Free, which imagined the development of a tendency or group of tendencies in human affairs.²¹