H. G. Wells 3 hr 47 min read

In a near-future powered by cheap atomic energy, a devastating war is fought with 'atomic bombs' that burn for days, and out of the ruins, humanity gropes toward a new world order.

H. G. Wells's 1914 novel is a startlingly prophetic dystopian and hard-SF landmark. Visionary, sweeping, sobering. Read it for the book that coined 'atomic bomb' and foresaw nuclear warfare three decades early, a grand Wellsian vision of catastrophe and renewal, imagining both the terror of the atom and the peace that might rise from its ashes.

In its time

Published in 1914, during the 1910s, lost worlds and interplanetary adventure.

Reading it

3 hr 47 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).