Changes

Wells was fascinated by radioactivity, and in his novel ''Tono-Bungay'' wrote:

Wells was fascinated by radioactivity, and in his novel ''Tono-Bungay'' wrote:

:To my mind radio-activity is a real disease of matter.  Moreover, it is a contagious disease.  It spreads.  You bring those debased and crumbling atoms near others and those too presently catch the trick of swinging themselves  out of coherent existence.  It is in matter exactly what the decay of our old culture is in society, a loss of traditions and distinctions and assured reactions.  When I think of these inexplicable dissolvent centres that have come into being in our globe--these quap heaps are surely by far the largest that have yet been found in the world; the rest as yet mere specks in grains and crystals--I am haunted by a grotesque fancy of the ultimate eating away and dry-rotting and dispersal of all our world.  So that while man still struggles and dreams his very substance will change and crumble from beneath him.  I mention this here as a queer persistent fancy.  Suppose, indeed, that is to be the end of our planet; no splendid climax and finale, no towering accumulation of achievements, but just--atomic decay!

:To my mind radio-activity is a real disease of matter.  Moreover, it is a contagious disease.  It spreads.  You bring those debased and crumbling atoms near others and those too presently catch the trick of swinging themselves  out of coherent existence.  It is in matter exactly what the decay of our old culture is in society, a loss of traditions and distinctions and assured reactions.  When I think of these inexplicable dissolvent centres that have come into being in our globe--these quap heaps are surely by far the largest that have yet been found in the world; the rest as yet mere specks in grains and crystals--I am haunted by a grotesque fancy of the ultimate eating away and dry-rotting and dispersal of all our world.  So that while man still struggles and dreams his very substance will change and crumble from beneath him.  I mention this here as a queer persistent fancy.  Suppose, indeed, that is to be the end of our planet; no splendid climax and finale, no towering accumulation of achievements, but just--atomic decay!