Clarke Voices, pp.100-101. “Wells was one of the few writers of his time who had the rquisite imagination and technical competence to understand the social changes then taking place as well as the ability to foresee the ways in which science would continue to affect the conduct of human life. In 1902 he did not expect a successful aeroplane to have been flown much before 1950. But by 1907 when he set out to write the War in the Air, at a time when the Zeppelin was still an experiment and Blériot had not yet flown the Channel, Wells returned to the prophetic style of his earlier fantasies. His new thesis was “that with the flying machine war alters its character; it ceases to be an affair of “fronts” and becomes an affair of “areas”; neither side, victor or loser, remains immune from the gravest injuries, and while there is a vast increase in the destructiveness of war, there is also an increased indecisiveness.”
