This is the annotated edition including the rare biographical essay by Edwin E. Slosson called “H. G. Wells — A Major Prophet Of His Time”.
Mr. Wells's book is brilliant and interesting. The author's social forecast claims to be descriptive of society as it is to be, rather than of society as it ought to be, and it is not, therefore, to be judged as an embodiment of his ideals ; but none the less the nature of his ideals is almost constantly in evidence, and is responsible for the hard, forbidding, and sometimes repulsive character of the society he anticipates. The only light with which his future is to be illumined is that of mechanical science. Mechanical science is the fountain light of all his day, the master-light of all his seeing —not only as regards the future, but largely as regards the past. The triumphs of democracy during the past two centuries he attributes to the advances in mechanics which have given a new industrial order— utterly ignoring the fact that the democratic advance was led by the American colonies, in which the new industrial order had no foothold save in a few cities, and these cities the strongholds of the opponents of the democratic movement.
