The war in the air, and particularly how Mr. Bert Smallways fared while it lasted

About this book

H. G. Wells’s speculative adventure follows Bert Smallways, an ordinary Englishman swept into a future war fought from the air, and brings the scale of international conflict down to one man’s misadventures. Alone in a balloon high above the ground, Bert finds a stillness utterly separate from the noise below. When Prince Karl Albert orders a dead sailor removed without pausing his conversation, the casual gesture makes clear how far Bert’s youthful idea of war is from its human cost.