3 Predictions of HG Wells that have proved true!
No other author had envisioned the future as vividly as Herbert G. Wells. Born in 1866, in Bromley, Kent in the United Kingdom, he was an English novelist, socialist, journalist and historian known for his science fiction novels.
If you read his books, it seems as if he could see the future and was merely narrating it in his works! They take you down a road full of possibilities, with such vivid narratives that it feels as if he has truly experienced these futuristic technologies already! His most notable works include the famous novel The Time Machine (1895) and War of the Worlds (1897).
Back when even electricity had not been discovered, Wells wrote about the advent of space technology, airplanes, atomic bombs, satellite television, biological engineering and even a technology that resembled today’s World Wide Web! Could you have imagined all of that in the 17th Century? He even wrote about aliens and time travel! Here are three of his most iconic predictions that eventually came true!
The Atomic Bomb
Well’s novel, The World Set Free written in 1914, described about the development of atomic bombs that could be continuously powered using radioactivity. The first atomic bomb was made by Oppenheimer in July, 1945 that resulted in the twin bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War a month later. However, Wells, in his 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds, had already warned that unless there is a global government, the nations will collide against each other and destroy each other using nuclear weapons. He even predicted laser weapons and biological conflict in his novel. Can you imagine thinking so far ahead in time!
In his 1933 novel, ‘The Shape of Things to Come’, Wells wrote about bombings, raids, conflict between nations and even emerging global superpowers.
Men on Moon
In 1901, his book ‘The First Men on the Moon’ elaborated on a lunar adventure of two characters. This is said to have inspired the lunar missions and Neil’s Armstrong’s moon expedition in 1969.
Alternate realities and emails
Exploring alternate reality in ‘Men Like Gods’ (1923), Wells showed his characters to be freely communicating with each other using wireless devices which was a combination of email and voicemail-like technology that we see today. In 1937, he had envisioned a type of an encyclopedia of knowledge that could be accessed by anyone and anywhere around the world. He also visualized that people would be employed to continuously update the information. His ideas have been laid in his book World Brain (1937). By now, you would have guessed, he actually predicted the idea of today's World Wide Web, the Internet, Google and Wikipedia!
Hailed as a genius and a clairvoyant writer right since his debut, H.G. Wells has shaped the imagination of every science fiction writer that has come after him. His fictional prophecies to real life discoveries are a testament to how eerily accurate his predictions were.