Reviewer Mary Whitebrough noted: "It is commonly believed than Benson wrote "Lord of the World" at least partly in response to the writings of H.G.Wells with their vision of a technologically-advanced secularized future in store for humanity. But it is also possible that Wells, a veteran of numerous debates with Catholics, may have returned the favor. Wells' own "The Shape of Things to Come" takes up the basic plot element of "Lord of the World" and turns it upside down. In "Things to Come", too, a secularized World Government embarks on a head-on confrontation with the Catholic Church and eventually destroys it - but for Wells, the World Secularists are the Good Guys and destroying the Church is a necessary, positive act. (...) To be sure, Wells' World Government is far less brutal than the one predicted by Benson. In Wells' version The Pope and Cardinals are simply dosed with sleeping gas, rather than being firebombed, and Catholics are mainly educated out of their reactionary ways rather than persecuted into martyrdom.(...) It is amusing to note that the Catholic Benson and the Secularist Wells were at one in dismissing the Protestants' power of resistance and seeing only the Catholic Church as a worthy opponent for Secularism. (...) The Three super states into which the world of "Lord of the World" is divided - American Republic, European Confederation and Eastern Empire - prefigure George Orwell's "Oceania", "Eurasia" and "Eastasia" in the world of "Nineteen Eighty Four". Orwell, omnivorous relentless reader that he was, had likely read "Lord of the World".