A Story of the Days To Come
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| Author | H. G. Wells |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Released in | Tales of Space and Time |
| Publisher | Harper & Row |
| Media Type | |
| Released | 1899 |
A Story of the Days To Come is a short story by H. G. Wells published in 1899, depicting two lovers in a dystopian future London of the 22nd century. It explores the implications of excessive urbanization, class warfare, and advances in the technology of medicine, communication, transportation, and agriculture. Like "When the Sleeper Wakes", published in the same year, the story extrapolates the trends Wells observed in nineteenth-century Victorian London three hundred years into the future.
The London of the 22nd century is over 30 million people in population, with the lower classes living in subterranean dwellings, and the middle and upper classes living in skyscrapers and largely communal accommodations. Moving walkways interconnect the city, with fast air-travel and superhighways available between cities. The countryside is largely abandoned.
Many aspects of the world of these two stories will be instantly familiar to readers of the more popular Issac Asimov's Robot series written 50 years later. Although no apparent citation exists crediting Wells' world as the derivation for the Asimov stories' settings and culture, the parallels between the two are striking.
[edit] Plot summary
A wealthy heiress falls in love with a middle-class worker of romantically quaint disposition. In part one, the woman's father hires a hypnotist to program his daughter to instead choose a more appropriate suitor selected by him. When that plot is unraveled, the couple secretly marry and flee into the abandoned countryside and attempt to live off the land. After being driven back into the city, the couple live a modest middle-class lifestyle until their money runs out. At that point, they move to the "underneath" area of London to toil in physical labor as lower-class workers. Finally, their issues are resolved through the machinations of her spurned would-be suitor, and they resume a middle class lifestyle.
Among other things, this short story appears to anticipate technical developments toward massive urbanization, skyscrapers, moving sidewalks, superhighways, and intercontinental aircraft traveling at jet speeds.
Socially and economically, however, it predicts a very stratified class structure and a largely communistic society where few mega-corporations control all means of production. It also predicts hypnosis as a supplement or replacement to psychology, "creches" where child-rearing is transferred from parents to professionals, and a megapolis served by city-wide moving walkways and escalators, with enormous cities (four in England) separated by abandoned countryside.
