'It has begun, ' he writes in the diary in which these things are recorded. 'It is not for me to reach out to consequences I cannot foresee. I am a part, not a whole; I am a little instrument in the armoury of Change. If I were to burn all these papers, before a score of years had passed, some other man would be doing this...' H.G. Wells classic The World Set Free, written in 1913 and originally published in 1914, predicting the atomic bomb. A true literary gem.