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H. G. Wells made huge efforts to popularise science throughout his life. And his speculations about the future still inspire and thrill us. He failed in one of his most dearly loved schemes, his attempt to establish a world database of knowledge. In World Brain (Admantine Classics, £25, ISBN 0 7449 0114 6), Alan Mayne introduces us to Wells’s notion of world knowledge. Wells wanted a huge body of information compiled by scientists and others to act as a universal resource, something he felt that politicians and children alike could benefit from. Pity he missed the Net.