Wells and the World State

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>H. G. Wells conceived the world state as a unified socio-political entity that would allow humans to endure the precarities of evolutionary time and shape a collective human destiny. The chapter discusses Wells’s project through its relationship with time at the levels of chronology, genre, and narrative. Chronologically, the world state shortens the timeframes it sets off for the realization of its goals. Generically, the project surpasses genre, yet tends toward future history. At the level of narrative, it resorts to past tenses to contain the future. Such features bespeak the increased urgency Wells attached to the world state over time.</jats:p>