The Shape of Things to Come
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The Shape of Things to Come is a work of science fiction by H. G. Wells, published in 1933, which speculates on future events from 1933 until the year 2106. It is not a novel, but rather a fictional history book, similar in style to Star Maker and Last and First Men, both by Olaf Stapledon. Wells creates a framing device by claiming that the book is his edited version of notes written by an eminent diplomat, Dr Philip Raven, who had been having dream visions of a history textbook published in 2106, and wrote down what he could remember of it.
The book is dominated by Wells's belief in a world state as the solution to mankind's problems. Wells successfully predicted the Second World War, although he envisaged it dragging on into the 1960s, being finally ended only by a devastating plague that almost destroys civilisation. Wells then envisages a benevolent dictatorship - 'The Dictatorship of the Air' (a term obviously modeled on 'The Dictatorship of the proletariat') - arising from the controllers of the world's surviving transportation systems (the only people with global power). This dictatorship promotes science, enforces Basic English as a global lingua franca, and eradicates all religion, setting the world on the route to a peaceful utopia. When the dictatorship finds it necessary to kill political opponents, the condemned persons are given a chance to emulate the ancient philosophers Socrates and Seneca and take a poison tablet in a congenial environment of their choice.
Eventually, after a century of re-shaping humanity, the dictatorship is overthrown in a completely bloodless coup, the former rulers are sent into a very honourable retirement, and the world state "withers away" as was predicted by Marx. The last part of the book is a detailed description of the Utopian world which emerges, in some way reminiscent of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward.
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[edit] Prediction of the submarine-launched ballistic missile
Wells' book can be credited with an accurate prediction of the submarine launched ballistic missile, which was to assume a crucial role in the Cold War period. Though the warheads of what he termed "air torpedoes" were envisaged as chemical rather than nuclear, Wells fully grasped - two decades ahead of the military planners - the strategic implications of combining submarines with weapons of mass destruction.
The relevant passage (Chapter four of the Second Book) reads: "The raider submarines were specially designed as long-distance bases for gas warfare. They carried no guns nor ordinary fighting equipment. They had practically unlimited cruising range, and within them from five to nine aeroplanes were packed with a formidable supply of gas bombs. One of them carried thirty long-range air torpedoes with all the necessary directional apparatus.(...) The smallest of these raiders carried enough of such stuff to 'prepare' [euphemism in the original] about eight hundred square miles of territory. Completely successful, it could have turned the most of the London or New York of that time, after some clamour and running and writhing and choking, into a cityful of distorted corpses. These vessels made London vulnerable from Japan, Tokyo vulnerable from Dublin; they abolished the last corners of safety in the world."
As well as predicting this application of submarines, Wells correctly predicted that these fearsome weapons would not be fully utilised and would be mainly used to create deterrence between the various powers holding them.
[edit] Film adaptations
There have been two film adaptations of the novel.
- Things to Come, a 1936 film with a screenplay by Wells himself.
- H. G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come, a 1979 science fiction film very loosely based on the book.
[edit] Other adaptations
- Playstation 2-First-person shooter "Cold Winter"’s story features "The Shape of Things to Come". Cutscenes explain, that the game’s super villain, that isn’t fundamentally bad, got inspired by the book to induce a nuclear winter by systematic nuclear strikes to reduce the world’s population down to a viable minimum and prevent its definitive destruction. Another supposed advantage: The survivors would be in such awe of the A-bomb, that they wouldn’t construct it again. Further, a book cover can be seen in one of the loading screens.
[edit] The Kipling Connection
Wells' "Air and Sea Contol", the association of pilots and techinicians which controls the world's communications and eventually develops into a world government, seems a clear literary descendant of institution called "The A.B.C" in the series of the same name by Rudyard Kipling, with which Wells was certainly familiar. The Kipling series is set in a world where airships are commonly used both for freight and passenger service, as well as for preventing civil unrest using powerful sonic weapons:
"The A.B.C., that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score persons, controls the Planet. Transportation is Civilisation, our motto runs. Theoretically we do what we please, so long as we do not interfere with the traffic and all it implies. Practically, the A.B.C. confirms or annuls all international arrangements, and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little Planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration on its shoulders".
The above description, from Kipling's "With the Night Mail", seems very applicable to the world-wide institution depicted by Wells.
[edit] External links
- Full text - Available freely from the University of Adelaide
