H. G. Wells 
The War In The Air 

‘The War In The Air’, war novel written in 1907 by H. G. Wells, is often referenced because in it Wells so accurately anticipated lots of details of aerial warfare – dogfights, bombing raids, even what the earth looks like from up in the air – none of which existed or were possible when he wrote the book and when the most primitive flying machines had only just been invented.

In other words, it is a masterpiece of imaginative prophecy and another one of Wells’s books, in that it’s a real mish-mash of subject matter and tone.



Thus he chooses to recount the outbreak of this epic world war (sometime around 1914, i.e. in his then-future) and the triumph of the mighty German airfleet – via the adventures of the comic figure of Bert Smallways, keeper of a failed second-hand bicycle shop in suburban Kent. Bathos.