The Shape of Things to Come

The Shape of Things to Come

First edition dust jacket
Author	H. G. Wells
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Future history
Publisher	Hutchinson (UK) Macmillan (USA)
Publication date	September 1933
Media type	Print

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. In the book, a world state is established as the solution to humanity's problems.

As a frame story, Wells claims 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. It is split into five separate sections or "books":

The Shape of Things to Come was written as a future history. Seen in retrospect, it can be considered as an alternative history, diverging from reality in late 1933 or early 1934, the point of divergence being US President Franklin D. Roosevelt's failure to implement the New Deal and revive the US economy and Adolf Hitler's failure to revive the German economy by rearmament. Instead, the worldwide economic crisis continues for thirty years, concurrently with the war, as described above.

Wells predicted a Second World War breaking out with a European conflagration from the flashpoint of a violent clash between Germans and Poles at Danzig. Wells set the date for this as January 1940. Poland proves a military match for Nazi Germany and they engage in an inconclusive war lasting ten years. More countries are eventually dragged into the fighting, but France and the Soviet Union are only marginally involved, Britain remains neutral, and the United States fights inconclusively with Japan. The Austrian Anschluss happens during, rather than before, the war. Czechoslovakia avoids German occupation and its president, Edvard Beneš, survives to initiate the final "Suspension of Hostilities" in 1950. The war ends with no victor but total exhaustion, collapse and disintegration of all the fighting states and of the neutral countries, equally affected by the deepening economic crisis. The whole world descends into chaos: nearly all governments break down, and a devastating plague in 1956 and 1957 kills a large part of humanity and almost destroys civilisation.