SF Signal: H.G. Wells - Master Predictor

H.G. Wells - Master Predictor

Historian and futurist W. Warren Wagar reviews the range of H.G. Wells's contributions to the discipline of future thinking in this 1983 article H.G. Wells and the Genesis of Future Studies. It mentions Wells's work, including Anticipations of the Reactions of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought. (Yay Gutenberg!)

Here's an excerpt of Wagar's article on Wells's prediction powers:

Anticipations ranged widely in its subject matter, from the future of transport to the future of world order. The first chapters are familiar fare to anyone who has read other books of the time by journalists sketching with enthusiasm the progress to be expected from science in the new century. Wells looked ahead to the first aircraft and to broad highways teeming with automobiles, busses, and trucks. Suburbia would triumph over city and countryside. In the United States. one vast unbroken sprawl of middle-class life would reach from Boston to Washington. Homes would be prefabricated, and household appliances and chemicals would put an end to the need for servants.

But in later chapters, Wells turned from his predictions of miracle dishwashing solvents and tidy electric ranges to something that for him was much more crucial. By the close of the 20th century, he foresaw the collapse of capitalism and the nation state system in great technologically advanced total wars that the tycoons and the politicians could not, ultimately, understand or control. Power would slip through their fingers. They would be swiftly replaced by the technically competent, by scientists and engineers and managers, who would learn from their errors and build a world state of peace and plenty.