H. G. Wells 
The War in the Air 

The War in the Air, a military science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, written in four months in 1907 and serialised and published in 1908 in The Pall Mall Magazine, is like many of Wells’s works notable for its prophetic ideas, images, and concepts—in this case, the use of the aircraft for the purpose of warfare and the coming of World War I. The novel’s hero is Bert Smallways, a ‘forward-thinking young man’ and a ‘kind of bicycle engineer of the let’s-‘ave-a-look-at-it and enamel-chipping variety.’