Herbert George Wells (1866—1946) was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, writing dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, but he is now best remembered for his science fiction novels. "The World Set Free" is a futuristic novel, written in 1913 and first published the following year. It was incredibly prophetic on a major scale, since Wells predicted nuclear warfare years before research began and described a weapon of enormous destructive power, that is used from the air and that would wipe out everything for miles.