The Shape of Things to Come

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The Shape of Things to Come

Dust jacket of the first edition.
Written by:	H. G. Wells
Central Theme:
Synopsis:
Genre(s):	Future history
First published:	September 1933

The Shape of Things to Come is a 1933 Speculative Fiction novel by H. G. Wells, detailing mankind's struggles to survive and reach the future in the midst of global war and societal collapse.

The original novel predicted World War II (though in the book the war lasts for a decade or more), which ends inconclusively but decimates all of civilization -- which is not helped by a horrific plague which nearly effaces the human populace.

Wells then envisions a benevolent One World Order which comes in and, using its monopoly on the world's surviving transportation infrastructure, begins to rebuild society into a scientific Utopia. After a century, the One World Order is peacefully overthrown, after which the utopia is apparently achieved.

Some of Wells’ short-term predictions would come true, such as the aerial bombing of whole cities presented in more detail than in his previous The War in the Air and the eventual development of weapons of mass destruction. Others, such as the withering of state-power and the dissolution of Islam, were rather premature.

The novel was adapted to film by Wells himself in 1936 as Things to Come. Forty-three years later, in 1979, the title (and little else) was appropriated for another sci-fi film.

Tropes used in The Shape of Things to Come include:

• After the End
• Balkanize Me: As an aftermath of the novel's version of World War Two, the effectiveness of many countries' governments to enforce their power faded in varying degrees, rendering many regions de facto autonomous.
  • Divided States of America: For example Utah, where Mormonism was then declared the state religion.
• Black Shirt: Actual Fascist Italy Black Shirts are still operating some time after the second Conference at Basra in 1978.
• Exty Years From Now
• History Marches On: Subverted when the book (more or less accurately) prognosticates the start of World War II. Then double-subverted when the book's WWII goes on for over a decade and completely obliterates all of human society.
  • The Great Politics Mess-Up
• No Bikes in the Apocalypse: Subverted in chapter 11 Europe in 1960 wherein the Diary of Titus Cobbett is mentioned, written during Cobbett's bicycle ride through the completely devastated Europe of 1958.
• Literary Agent Hypothesis: The book claims to be adapted from the notes of one Dr. Philip Raven.
• The Plague
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Wings Over The World.