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30/9/06 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minervasoloBeen watching bits and bobs of the HGWells docudrama. Not very good, alas. But it did remind me of something else, also, unfortunately, not very good.
Well, that's not entirely true. Just very slow. HGWell's 'The War in the Air'. It's very slow moving, but fascinating for being written prior to World War One, when war in the air seemed fairly far off. The docudrama made Wells out as an oracle, I will admit he was farsighted.
Preface to the 1921 Edition
A short preface to The War in the Air has become necessary if the reader is to do justice to that book. It is one of a series of stories I have written at different timesL The World Set Free is another, and When the Sleeper Wakes is a third; which are usually spoken of as 'scientific romances' or 'futurist romances', but which it would be far better to call 'fantasias of possibility'. They take some developing possibility in human affairs and work it out so as to develop the broad consequences of that possiblity. This War in the Air was written, the reader should note, in 1907, and it began to appear as a serial story in the Pall Mall Magazine in January 1908. This was before the days of hte flying machines; Bleriot did not cross the Channel until July 1909; and the Zeppelin airship was still in its infancy. The reader will find it amusing now to compare the guesses and notions of the author with the acheieves realities of today.
But the book, I venture to think, has not been altogether superseded. The main idea is not that men will fly, or to show how they will fly; the main idea is a thesis that the experiences of the intervening years strengthen rather than supersede.The thesis is this; that with the flying machine was alters in its character; it ceases to be an affair of 'fronts' and becomes an affair of 'areas'; neither side, victor or loser, remains immunes from the gravest injuries, and while there is a vast increase in the destructiveness of war, there is also and increased indecisiveness. Consequently 'War in the Air' means social destruction instead of victory at the end of the war. After all that has happened since this fantasia of possibility was written, I do not think that there is much wrong with that thesis. And after a recent journey to Russi, of which I have given an account in Russia in the Shadows, I am inclined to think very well of myself as I re-read the entirely imaginary account of the collapse of civilisation under the strain of modern war which forms the Epilogue of this story. In 1907 this chapter was read with hearty laughter as the production of an 'imaginative novelist's' distempered brain. Is it quite so wildly funny today?
And I ask teh readto remember that date of 1907 also when he reads of Prince Karl Albert and the Graf von Winterfield. Seven years before the Great War, its shadow stood upon our sunny world as plainly as all that, for the 'imaginative novelist' - or any one else with common sense - to see. The great catastrophe marched upon us in hte daylight. But everybody thought that somebody else would stop it before it really arrived. Behind that great catastrophe march others of today. The steady deteriotation of currency, the shrinkage of production, the ebb of educational energy in Europe, work out to consequences that are obvious to every clear-headed man. National and imperialist rivalries march whole nations at the quickstep towards social collapse. The process goes on as plainly as the militarist process was going on in the year when The War in the Air was written.
Do we still trust to sombody else?
H. G. Wells, Easton Glebe, 1921
Preface to the 1941 Edition
Here in 1941 The War in the Air is being reprinted once again. It was written in 1907 and first published in 1908. It was reprinted in 1921, and then i wrote a preface which also I am reprinting. Again I ask the reader to note hte warnings I gave in that year, twenty years ago. Is there anything to add to that preface now? Nothing except my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: 'I told you so. You damned fools' (the italics are mine)
H. G. Wells
The italics are actally his, as far as I can tell.
How many catastrophes are rolling towards us now, and how many of us are waiting for someone else to sort them out?
Well, that's not entirely true. Just very slow. HGWell's 'The War in the Air'. It's very slow moving, but fascinating for being written prior to World War One, when war in the air seemed fairly far off. The docudrama made Wells out as an oracle, I will admit he was farsighted.
Preface to the 1921 Edition
A short preface to The War in the Air has become necessary if the reader is to do justice to that book. It is one of a series of stories I have written at different timesL The World Set Free is another, and When the Sleeper Wakes is a third; which are usually spoken of as 'scientific romances' or 'futurist romances', but which it would be far better to call 'fantasias of possibility'. They take some developing possibility in human affairs and work it out so as to develop the broad consequences of that possiblity. This War in the Air was written, the reader should note, in 1907, and it began to appear as a serial story in the Pall Mall Magazine in January 1908. This was before the days of hte flying machines; Bleriot did not cross the Channel until July 1909; and the Zeppelin airship was still in its infancy. The reader will find it amusing now to compare the guesses and notions of the author with the acheieves realities of today.
But the book, I venture to think, has not been altogether superseded. The main idea is not that men will fly, or to show how they will fly; the main idea is a thesis that the experiences of the intervening years strengthen rather than supersede.The thesis is this; that with the flying machine was alters in its character; it ceases to be an affair of 'fronts' and becomes an affair of 'areas'; neither side, victor or loser, remains immunes from the gravest injuries, and while there is a vast increase in the destructiveness of war, there is also and increased indecisiveness. Consequently 'War in the Air' means social destruction instead of victory at the end of the war. After all that has happened since this fantasia of possibility was written, I do not think that there is much wrong with that thesis. And after a recent journey to Russi, of which I have given an account in Russia in the Shadows, I am inclined to think very well of myself as I re-read the entirely imaginary account of the collapse of civilisation under the strain of modern war which forms the Epilogue of this story. In 1907 this chapter was read with hearty laughter as the production of an 'imaginative novelist's' distempered brain. Is it quite so wildly funny today?
And I ask teh readto remember that date of 1907 also when he reads of Prince Karl Albert and the Graf von Winterfield. Seven years before the Great War, its shadow stood upon our sunny world as plainly as all that, for the 'imaginative novelist' - or any one else with common sense - to see. The great catastrophe marched upon us in hte daylight. But everybody thought that somebody else would stop it before it really arrived. Behind that great catastrophe march others of today. The steady deteriotation of currency, the shrinkage of production, the ebb of educational energy in Europe, work out to consequences that are obvious to every clear-headed man. National and imperialist rivalries march whole nations at the quickstep towards social collapse. The process goes on as plainly as the militarist process was going on in the year when The War in the Air was written.
Do we still trust to sombody else?
H. G. Wells, Easton Glebe, 1921
Preface to the 1941 Edition
Here in 1941 The War in the Air is being reprinted once again. It was written in 1907 and first published in 1908. It was reprinted in 1921, and then i wrote a preface which also I am reprinting. Again I ask the reader to note hte warnings I gave in that year, twenty years ago. Is there anything to add to that preface now? Nothing except my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: 'I told you so. You damned fools' (the italics are mine)
H. G. Wells
The italics are actally his, as far as I can tell.
How many catastrophes are rolling towards us now, and how many of us are waiting for someone else to sort them out?
