5/21/2018 Futures Volume 2 Issue 2 1970 [Doi 10.1016%2Fs0016-3287%2870%2980011-8] I.F. Clarke -- The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973- H. G. Well

1/5

2 Pattern of Prediction

171

economic and social organisation is

satisfactory.

l Technical progressundergoes a con-

siderable slowing down; or on the

contrary a speeding up.

l Work motivation decreases.Tradi-

tional morals valorising effort are

superseded by a value for immediate

satisfaction. Unemployment increases

together with the governments social

expenditure - a redistribution of

revenue takesplace-taxes increase. Or

on the contrary the motivation to work

remains stable etc. . . .

o A desire for liberty but also for

belonging to a group for assimilation

emerges very strongly; or on the con-

trary the desire for liberty becomes

blunted in the presence of other

expectations.

The detailed definition of the hypo-

thetical situation is expressed y a set of

evaluations concerning the input. Start-

ing with thesehypotheses he output-

the indicators-acquires values that

expressa given situation-for instance

in 1980. The aspects f this situation are

establishedand allow comparisonswith

other conjectured situations.

The interest of this type of research s

first to oblige one to conceive detailed

and coherent hypotheses; then to

analyse and compare the resulting

situations and even continually to

contest the logic which led to these

situations. That iswhy the experiment is

educational.

Henri Bianchi, Centre de Recherches Science

et Vie, Paris.

The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973

H. G. WELLS: EXPONENT OF

EXTRAPOLATION

I. F. Clarke

H. G. Wells combined an unusual gift for creative vision with the logical mind

of a scientist. Facts and fantasy used to discern the probable direction of human

development in the context of the whole world and beyond made the Wellsian

vision of the future a major factor in making men think about the need to

prepare for the changes that lay ahead.

WITHIN less than a decade-from The

Time Machine in 1895 to Anticipations

in 1902-H. G. Wells established

himself as the true begetter of modern

science iction and the first exponent of

large-scale social forecasting. He was

both prophet and portent. More than

any other writer before the First World

War he was responsible or encouraging

Professor I. F. Clarke is Head of the English

Studies Department, University of Strathcjyde,

UK.

new attitudes to science and society

Through his fantasies and his more

restrained forecasts he taught the

world how to think in double time-

to see contemporary capabilities as the

first stage n the development of future

possibilities. And he did this in three

ways: through scientific fantasies that

looked

into

the most varied kinds of

possibility-an invasion from Mars

the existence of rational creatures on

the moon the beginnings of atomic

warfare; through precise and elaborate

FUTURES June 1970

5/21/2018 Futures Volume 2 Issue 2 1970 [Doi 10.1016%2Fs0016-3287%2870%2980011-8] I.F. Clarke -- The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973- H. G. Well

2/5

172

Ihe Pattern of Prediction

predictions of the ways in which social

industrial and intellectual innovations

would change the inherited pattern of

society; and through detailed accounts

of the ideal state of a rational organised

and humane future world.

Wells combined the imagination of

genius with the logical mind of a

scientist. His successas a writer in

different fields depended on the way

his mind could dart from fact to fantasy

and on the way he could naturalise the

probable by working up from the tap

roots of contemporary knowledge into

the full sunlight of other times and

other places. This unusual gift for

creative vision began to flower at the

Normal School of Science in London

where Wells had the good fortune to

study biology under Darwins friend

and associate T. H. Huxley. His

training as a biologist gave him a sense

of the universal and irresistible move-

ment in living things; and out of

evolutionary theory he developed the

characteristic Wellsian idea of history

as a sustained process-an unending

advance towards more complex sys-

tems and he hoped better worlds of

the future. The entire body of scientific

knowledge served as the raw material

out of which Wells could derive the

most extraordinary fantasies of time

and space or in which he could

discern the probable direction of human

development on this planet.

For these reasons he work of H. G.

Wells marks the great divide between

the old ways of predictive fiction and

the modern techniques of forecasting.

His greatest effect in fiction was to

advance extrapolation beyond the stage

of Jules Verne. His method was to use

his stories as a means of plotting the

critical path of probability. The device

of let-us-assumewas central to all his

scientific romances. Given a higher

civilisation on Mars then it followed

that a catastrophic change in environ-

ment might compel the Martians to

carry warfare sunward . . . their only

escape rom the destruction that genera-

tion after generation creeps upon

them.

The rockets blasted off from

Mars and the modern stereotype of

the invaders from another planet

began. But it was not of course the

Martians who gave Wells cause to

worry. Their fearful weapons were

already potential within Western indus-

trialism; for if technological warfare

were taken to the limit Wells foresaw

that it would be fought with devices

like the lethal Black Smoke the Heat

Ray and the tall War Vehicles. He was

right.

In this way Wells brought facts up

to the starting gate with fantasy. Out

of what was apparently the most

unpromising material he developed

exciting narratives that often obliged

the reader to consider the consequences

and the possibil ities of future change.

So Lenin learned from a reading of

The Time Machine

that human ideas

are based on the scale of the planet

we live in . . . If we succeed n making

contact with other planets all our

philosophical social and moral ideas

will have to be revised. From a

reading of The World Set Free anyone

could have learned that the atom

contained a source of power so potent

that a man might carry in his hand the

energy to light a city for a year fight

a fleet of battleships or drive one of

our giant liners across the Atlantic.

Long before the mushroom cloud

over Hiroshima it seemed evident to

Wells that the discoveries of Einstein

and Rutherford would force mankind

to choose between good and evil-to

use the atom for the purposes of peace

or of war. Today almost sixty years

after the appearance of The World Set

Free, it still comes as a surprise to

observe the way in which Wells found

his material in an abstruse scientific

paper by Frederick Soddy in 1909 and

out of it elaborated a forecast of atomic

energy in 1933. By an exceptional leap

of the imagination he described a new

form of warfare and gave the new term

atomic bomb to the English language.

FUTURES June 1970

5/21/2018 Futures Volume 2 Issue 2 1970 [Doi 10.1016%2Fs0016-3287%2870%2980011-8] I.F. Clarke -- The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973- H. G. Well

3/5

The Pattern of Predictiorl

173

FUTURES June 1970

The First Men in the Moon (1901)-This highly

original fantasy from H. G. Wels that still

reads well. Here Wels allowed himself the

hypothesis that there mig ht be life on the moon

and went on to describe the kind of rational

animal that could live there in the known

biological conditions.

Figure 1. Tw o space explorers in their late-

Victorian capsule hover in free fall as the

moon comes nearer.

Figure 2. Cavor, the scientist, explains how the

wireless works to the Selenites. Note how the

illustrator is quite incapable of match ing the

scientific element of the story with image s of

the creatures Wels describes in the text.

5/21/2018 Futures Volume 2 Issue 2 1970 [Doi 10.1016%2Fs0016-3287%2870%2980011-8] I.F. Clarke -- The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973- H. G. Well

4/5

174

The Pattern of Prediction

The War ofthe

Worlds

(1898)-This was

the most famous of We llss many

imaginative fantasies. It depended on a

single supposition-the possib ility that

a more advanced technolog ical society

might exist on Mars and might one day

be obliged to invade Earth.

Figure 3. A member of the species

Mart sapiens emerges from the space

capsule that brought him to earth. The

first image in a now familiar fantasy-

the fear that we might not be alone

in the universe.

FUTURES June 1970

5/21/2018 Futures Volume 2 Issue 2 1970 [Doi 10.1016%2Fs0016-3287%2870%2980011-8] I.F. Clarke -- The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973- H. G. Well

5/5

The Pat&n of Prediction

175

By the spring of 1959, he wrote,

A Modern Utopia, he showed how to

from nearly two hundred centres, and

every week added to their number,

avoid the muddle: The plain message

physical science has for the world at

roared the unquenchable crimson con-

flagrations of the atomic bombs . . .

large is this, that were our political

Most of the capital cities of the world

and social and moral devices only as

were burning; millions of people had

well contrived to their end as a linotype

machine . . .

there need now at the

already perished, and over great areas

present moment be no appreciable toil

government was at an end.

in the world.

That verdict of no confidence on

mans ability to profit from scientific

discovery came from one side of

Wellss brain. Although he wrote so

much about time-to-come, he was not

a simple-minded optimist. Many of his

stories were marked by a deep pessi-

mism, and he died despairing of the

future because he feared that men

lack the self-control to direct the

affairs o f our planet in a rational way.

Reason and emotion joined in Wells

to make him hate everything that

prevented the human being from

living the fullest and most satisfac tory

life possible.

At the back of all his thinking was

the vision of an ideal, scien tific under-

standing of life. Follow reason, he

suggested, discover the best means of

social organisation, and the future

would look af ter itsel f. And so, he

designed his utopias to show what men

could do, if they would only rid them-

selves of prejudice and ignorance. In

one s tory, In the Days of the Comet, he

lamented the shams and failures of his

world : Here were we British, forty-one

millions of people, in a state of almost

indescribably aimless economic and

moral muddle that we had neither the

courage, the energy, nor the intelli-

gence to improve. In his most ela-

borate scheme for a better world,

This was the traditional if only

message of all utopian literature, but

there were important differences that

made Wells the most acclaimed utopian

propagandist of his day; for he always

wrote in the context of the single

world state made possible by modern

communications, and he always saw

his ideal state as a dynamic system that

would change with the times. In this

way he aroused the enthusiasm of his

contemporaries who saw in his books

the reflection of that improved state

of society towards which all things

were moving. In tales such as A Modem

Utopia and The Shape of Things to Come

he proclaimed the happy union of

politics with technology, and of indi-

vidual spontaneity with social subordi-

nation. For this the critics called him

naive; and they often accused him-

with good reason at times-of failing

to make allowances for human de-

pravity. Although the horrors o f the

Nazi gas chambers and the brutalities

of the police states denied the hopes of

his utopias, the Wellsian vision of the

future proved to be a major factor in

making men give thought to the need

to prepare for the changes that lay

ahead. If technological forecasters are

looking for a founding father, they can

find example and warning in the life

and works of H. G. Wells.

FUTURES June 1870