The Extractive Logic of Fossil Capital in H. G. Wells's Scientific Prophecy

In H. G. Wells's trilogy of speculative books—Anticipations (1901), Mankind in the Making (1903), A Modern Utopia (1904)—and his novella The Time Machine (1895), he imagines humankind projected into near- and far-future worlds. This essay analyzes the scientific prophecy in these works to see how the extractive logic of a capitalist system that must maintain self-sustaining growth structures Wells's visions in symptomatic ways. The material basis of this capitalist dynamic is fossil energy. To imagine a future free of fossil capital means to recognize its false appearance of necessity, to fulfill Wells's own goal of liberating imagination from tradition.