In 1908 H G Wells published the very first work of fiction to anticipate that aircraft would play a major role in future conflicts. His novel The War in the Air depicted German airships terrorising American cities: ‘Nation rose against nation and air-fleet grappled air-fleet, cities blazed and men died in multitudes.’ No one described man-made catastrophes as well as Wells. He was the master of the doomsday moment, when people stare into the abyss and blink. In a short story of 1895, ‘The Stolen Bacillus’, he looked even further into the future without knowing it, describing how a suicide terrorist infects himself with a deadly virus so that he can spread the disease in an overcrowded city. 

Subscribe or Sign In to read the full article