The novel's hero and main character is Bert Smallways, who is described as "a forward-thinking young man" and a "kind of bicycle engineer of the let's-'ave-a-look-at-it and enamel-chipping variety.

Also introduced is their aged father, who recalls, with longing, the time when Bun Hill was a quiet village and he had been able to drive the local squire's carriage.

We also come to know that prior to Mr. Butteridge's invention, nobody had succeeded in producing a practical, "heavier-than-air" machine—only a few awkward devices of limited utility had been made since (such as the German "Drachenflieger" which had to be towed aloft and released from an airship).

Bert's disguise is soon seen through by the Germans, and, after he avoids being thrown overboard by the furious prince, he becomes relegated to the role of a witness to the true horror of war.

Tensions between Japan and the United States, exacerbated by the issue of American citizenship being denied to Japanese immigrants, leads to war breaking out between the Confederation of Eastern Asia and the US, whereupon the Confederation turns out to possess overwhelmingly strong aerial forces, and the US finds itself fighting a war on two fronts: the Eastern and the Western, in the air as well as on sea.

Bert Smallways is present as the Germans first attack an American naval fleet in the Atlantic, utterly obliterating it and proving dreadnoughts to be obsolete and helpless against aerial bombardment.

However, the surrender announcement rouses the population's patriotic fury; local militias rebel and manage to destroy a German airship over Union Square using a concealed artillery piece.

The Asians prove overwhelmingly superior, and the German airships are either destroyed or forced to flee, eventually surrendering to the Americans; only a few remain with Prince Karl Albert, who attempts a heroic last stand.

Their clash of personalities eventually culminates in a life-or-death confrontation, and Bert – originally gentle and sickened by bloodshed – overcomes his civilised scruples and kills the prince.

The Butteridge machine is cheap, easy and quick to build, and needs no big fields to take off or land – which mean it can be built and operated not only by national governments, but also by private groups, local militias, and even bandits – a development which tends to break up the war into a vast, incoherent multitude of localised struggles and which accelerates the already-begun process of break-up and disintegration of the world's nations.

While Bert experiences directly the events in America, news about what has happened in the rest of the world (specifically, in his native England) is few and scattered, with newspapers reduced to a single page before finally ceasing publication altogether; still, he hears with great alarm that London had shared the fate of New York.

The German assault on the US had bypassed Germany's European rivals, whose air fleets were considered too puny to constitute a threat, with the intention of totally dominating them once the Americans had been subdued.

However, the alarmed United Kingdom, France, Spain and Italy pooled their aerial resources into a single strong force, passed through Swiss airspace after destroying that country's own flying machines, and devastated Hamburg and Berlin.

The War in the Air, the Panic, and the Purple Death bring about "[w]ithin the space of five years" a total collapse of "the whole fabric of civilisation.

"[5] But Bert Smallways, fixated on his amorous attachment, returns home after many adventures to kill a rival and win the hand of his beloved Edna; they marry and have eleven children.

We are assured in the final chapter that "our present world state, orderly, scientific, and secured,"[6] would be eventually established, but that future is many decades or centuries off.

Also the major semi-historical chapters – interspersed in "The War in the Air" between the depictions of Bert Smallways' personal adventures, and written from the perspective of a future historian looking back with compassion at Twentieth Century people and their lethal nationalistic folly – clearly prefigure the tone of "Things to Come".

The military might and ability attributed to the Sino–Japanese alliance is clearly and manifestly inflated: constructing far more airships and flying machines than all the rest of the world put together; waging simultaneous all-out wars of conquest against the United States, Britain, Germany, and other powers; performing the gigantic logistical task of transporting a million people across the Pacific within a few days while at the same time conducting extensive military operations all over Asia, Africa, Europe and North America.

When on board the German air fleet, Bert is exposed to a mounting series of horrors and bloody scenes which make him increasingly sickened.

After having killed the Prince, Bert speaks to the kitten he had rescued in the middle of all the carnage, telling the innocent little creature of his regrets at having committed this act.

Tom is surprised and disturbed to find his nephew "was blooded" when he was only six years old, exhibiting Bert's apparent change in attitude toward that process.

Tom describes the sequence of events that caused the destruction of Bun Hill, and in the end Teddy agrees that it "shouldn't have happened" the way it did.

had shaken up Kipps and The War of the Worlds and poured out a new story that would appeal both to those who liked his social comedies and those who had been impressed by his early fantasies of terror.