In 1901 H.G. Wells published Anticipations, a provocative speculation on the future course of technology and on how social and political systems might evolve. In the same year, Conrad and Ford published their collaborative novel The Inheritors, a fantasy involving a race of individuals from the Fourth Dimension, the Inheritors of the title, who propose to transform society very much along the lines suggested by Wells. This paper examines the similarities between Wells's predictions and the intentions of Conrad and Ford's Inheritors for the future of humanity to argue that The Inheritors is the authors' response to conversations they had with Wells in the years prior to his challenging thesis in Anticipations. The central argument is that Conrad and Ford wrote their novel as an imaginative rebuttal to Wells's more outrageous predictions.

HG威尔斯（HG Wells）在1901年发表了《预期》，这是对未来技术发展以及社会和政治体系如何发展的一种挑衅性的推测。同年，康拉德（Conrad）和福特（Ford）出版了他们的合作小说《继承者》，这是一部幻想小说，涉及来自第四维度的个人，即头衔的继承者，他们提议按照威尔斯的建议非常改造社会。本文考察井的预测和康拉德和福特的继承者为人类未来的打算争辩说的相似的继承者之前，他在挑战的论文是作者，以对话，他们在几年曾与威尔斯响应Anticipations。中心论点是康拉德和福特写这本小说是对富国的更离谱的预言的富有想象力的反驳。