The Power of Prescience in Literature

Which fact about an author best illustrates the meaning of prescient?

A. Jane Austen's 1817 novel Persuasion is partly set in Bath, England.

B. In The Sleeper Awakes, written in 1899, H. G. Wells describes aerial warfare before it was invented.

C. George Eliot wrote Romola in 1862–1863 and set it in fifteenth-century Florence.

D. David Copperfield, published in 1850, is the most autobiographical of Charles Dickens's books.

Answer

The answer is B

Final answer:

The fact about H.G. Wells describing aerial warfare in The Sleeper Awakes before it was actually invented best illustrates the meaning of prescient.

Explanation:

The fact about an author that best illustrates the meaning of prescient, which refers to the ability to have foresight or to predict future events, is: In The Sleeper Awakes, written in 1899, H.G. Wells describes aerial warfare before it was invented.

This demonstrates a prescient view as H.G. Wells manages to foresee a significant development in warfare technology, which at the time of his writing, had not yet come to pass.

Other authors like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens masterfully depicted their own times or the past, and did not exhibit the foresight into technological or societal advancements that would qualify as prescient.