11 h 6 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when oceans no longer protect nations, and war can reach any city from the sky?
Bert Smallways repairs bicycles in Bun Hill and dreams of little beyond his own small world. Then a runaway balloon carries him into the secret plans of great powers. Cheerful, talkative and utterly unprepared, he finds himself aboard the German airship Vaterland, far from everything he knows.
In The War in the Air, H. G. Wells turns an ordinary man's misadventure into a warning about progress without wisdom. Inventors race to conquer flight while nations prepare to use it against each other. As war spreads, Bert wants only to get home, but the world around him is changing beyond anyone's control.
What you’ll discover
- An unlikely traveller Follow a bicycle mender whose accidental journey carries him far beyond his familiar streets.
- War above the clouds Encounter vast air fleets and cities suddenly exposed to attack from a new direction.
- Comedy with a dark edge Find sharp social comedy in the gap between grand ambitions and ordinary human understanding.
- The cost of progress Explore what happens when powerful machines develop faster than the wisdom needed to use them.
- A reason to return Share Bert's longing for home and for Edna, the woman whose memory draws him back.
Who will love it
For readers who love early science fiction, sharp social comedy and stories about how wars begin, and anyone curious about how people once imagined air power.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Bert Smallways lives in a small world
- Dreams of flight stir the whole world
- A runaway balloon carries Bert off
- The Germans seize Bert and the secret
- The air fleet strikes at New York
- War spreads and Bert is caught in it
- Progress without wisdom brings ruin
- Bert stands for the common man
- A comic voice tells a dark story
Who’s who
- Bert SmallwaysA cheerful, talkative bicycle mender from Bun Hill who is swept by accident into a world war and wants only to get home.
- ButteridgeA sharp-tongued Scottish inventor whose flying machine makes him the most hunted man in the world.
- Prince Karl AlbertThe proud and capable German commander of the airship Vaterland, who leads the surprise strike across the Atlantic.
- Tom SmallwaysBert's older brother, a dull, grumbling man who represents the family's cramped and unadventurous life in Bun Hill.
- EdnaA young woman Bert courts in Bun Hill, whose affection he hopes to win and whose memory draws him homeward.
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- Audiobook
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- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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La guerra nell’aria
by H. G. Wells · 1908
A runaway balloon carries bicycle mender Bert Smallways into a world war, where he wants only to get home.
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In short
The War in the Air is a novel by H. G.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Bert Smallways lives in a small world
The story opens in Bun Hill, a growing suburb in Kent, in the early years of the twentieth century. Bert Smallways is the younger son of a family that has never risen above shabby respectability. His brother Tom is a stolid, grumbling man, and the family lives among cheap houses, noisy shops and tired ambitions. Wells describes the place with a mixture of affection and scorn, as a town that is growing fast without knowing why.
Bert himself is quick, talkative and restless. He leaves school with little learning but plenty of nerve. He becomes a bicycle mechanic, and later runs a small cycle business that never quite pays. He is also fond of the new fashions of the day, the cheap papers, the music halls and the talk of what machines will soon do for mankind.
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What is The War in the Air about?
It follows Bert Smallways, a bicycle mender from Kent, who is carried by accident into a war fought with airships and flying machines. Wells uses his adventures to show how air power could end the safety of islands and oceans.
When was The War in the Air written?
H. G. Wells published it in 1908, only a few years after the first powered aeroplane flights. It is a work of fiction, but it imagines air raids and the fall of old defences with surprising foresight.
Who is Bert Smallways?
Bert is the hero, a cheerful, quick-talking young man from Bun Hill with little education. He is not a soldier or scientist, which is why his view of the war feels so close to that of an ordinary person.
The author
H. G. Wells
1866–1946 · English science fiction novelist
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was an English writer born in Bromley, Kent. He wrote novels, short stories and nonfiction. His novels included The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). He died in London.
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