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''World Brain'' in some ways, with [[hindsight]], seems to prefigure the Internet—but with a dignified sense of serious purpose that is quite unlike the Internet. Wells may in some ways have been more prophetic, or at any rate more savvy in his 1899 novella ''A Story of the Days to Come,'' when he wrote:
''World Brain'' in some ways, with [[hindsight]], seems to prefigure the Internet—but with a dignified sense of serious purpose that is quite unlike the Internet. Wells may in some ways have been more prophetic, or at any rate more savvy in his 1899 novella ''A Story of the Days to Come,'' when he wrote:
:This phonographic machine was the size and shape of a Dutch clock, and down the front of it were electric barometric indicators, and an electric clock and calendar, and automatic engagement reminders, and where the clock would have been was the mouth of a trumpet. When it had news the trumpet gobbled like a turkey, "Galloop, galloop," and then brayed out its message as, let us say, a trumpet might bray. It would well Mwres in full, rich, throaty tones about the overnight accidents to the omnibus flying machines that plied around the world, the latest arrivals at the fashionable resorts in Tibet, and of all the great monopolist company meetings of the day before. If Mwres did not like hearing what it said, he had only to touch a stud, and it would choke a little and talk about something else.<ref>Wells, H. G., (1899), "A Story of the Days to Come," from ''Tales of Space and TIme." Quotation is from pp. 193-4 of a Dover reprint edition, "Three Prophetic Novels of H. G. Wells."</ref>
:This phonographic machine was the size and shape of a Dutch clock, and down the front of it were electric barometric indicators, and an electric clock and calendar, and automatic engagement reminders, and where the clock would have been was the mouth of a trumpet. When it had news the trumpet gobbled like a turkey, "Galloop, galloop," and then brayed out its message as, let us say, a trumpet might bray. It would well Mwres in full, rich, throaty tones about the overnight accidents to the omnibus flying machines that plied around the world, the latest arrivals at the fashionable resorts in Tibet, and of all the great monopolist company meetings of the day before. If Mwres did not like hearing what it said, he had only to touch a stud, and it would choke a little and talk about something else.<ref>Wells, H. G., (1899), "A Story of the Days to Come," from ''Tales of Space and TIme." Quotation is from pp. 193-4 of a Dover reprint edition, "Three Prophetic Novels of H. G. Wells."</ref>
==Politics==
Wells was a Fabian socialist, eugenicist and anti-Semite. He dispised human liberty, sneering, "Consider the clerks and girls who hurry to their work of a morning across Brooklyn Bridge in New York, or Hungerford Bridge in London; go and see them, study their faces. They are free, with a freedom Socialism would destroy."<ref>Herbert George Wells, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=BvQJAAAAIAAJ New Worlds for Old]'' (The Macmillan company, 1908), p. 192</ref> An apologist for Stalinism, he visited the Soviet Union in 1934 and denied the [[Holodomor]].<ref>Edvard Radzinsky, ''Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives'', (Anchor, 1997) ISBN 0-385-47954-9, pp. 256-259; [http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/communism/com107.html Stalin-Wells talk: The verbatim record and a discussion by G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, J.M. Keynes, E. Toller and others]</ref> In his advcacy of eugenics, he displayed contempt for human life, writing, "No doubt Utopia will kill all deformed and monstrous and evilly diseased births."<ref>Herbert George Wells, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=w_HY2By17g4C A Modern Utopia]'' (London, Odoms Press Ltd., 1908, reprint: Forgotten Books, 2008) ISBN 1606201840, p. 86</ref> In a 1932 speech at Oxford University, Wells exhorted his audience, “I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.”<ref>H.G. Wells, “Liberalism and the Revolutionary Spirit,” ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=NxzTAAAAMAAJ After Democracy: Addresses and Papers on the Present World Situation]'' (London: Watts, 1932), p. 24</ref> Elsewhere he wrote, "A careful study of anti-Semitism, prejudice and accusations might be of great value to many Jews," he wrote, "who do not adequately realize the irritation they inflict."<ref>Alan M. Dershowitz, ''[ Chutzpah]'' (Simon and Schuster, 1992) ISBN 0671760890, p. 112</ref>
== See also ==
== See also ==