未来互联网纾 (1933)

The Shape of Things to Come is a science fiction novel written by the British writer H. G. Wells published in 1933. It takes the form of a future history that ends in 2106.

Synopsis

A long economic slump causes a major war that leaves Europe devastated and threatened by the plague. The chaos caused by the slump returns much of the world to medieval conditions. Pilots and technicians that formerly served in various nations' air forces maintain a network of functioning airfields. Around this nucleus, technological civilization is rebuilt, with the pilots and other skilled technicians eventually seizing worldwide power and sweeping away the remnants of the old nation states. A benevolent dictatorship is set up, paving the way for world peace by abolishing national divisions, enforcing the English language, promoting scientific learning, and outlawing religion. The enlightened world-citizens are able to depose the dictators peacefully and go on to breed a new race of super-talents, able to maintain a permanent utopia.

Analysis

Overview

Though his story is a work of fiction, several of Wells' short-term predictions from The Shape of Things to Come would come true, such as the aerial bombing of whole cities (which was presented in more detail than in his previous book 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, have not come to pass.

A frame story claims that the book is Wells' 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 recall of it. It is split into five "books." The first of these details history from the Great War to 1933. In late 1933 or early 1934, 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, cause the worldwide economic crisis to continue for thirty years, concurrently with a Second World War – a war fought between countries already on the verge of economic collapse, which is hastened by the war.

Wells' Second World War breaks out in January 1940 with a European conflagration from the flashpoint of a violent clash between Germans and Poles at Danzig – closely matching the actual outbreak of WWII. However, Wells's imagined war sharply diverges from the actual war when Poland proves a military match for Germany. The inconclusive war lasts ten years. Other countries are eventually dragged into the fighting, though France and the Soviet Union are only marginally involved. The United Kingdom remains neutral and the United States fights with Japan to indecisive effect on both sides. The Austrian Anschluss happens during, rather than before, the war. Czechoslovakia avoids German occupation. Its President, Edvard Beneš, survives to initiate the final Suspension of Hostilities in 1950.

Wells' prediction was off the mark with regard to Spain. In Wells' history, Spain stays out of the violent passions sweeping Europe. In actuality, the Spanish Civil War – a particular strong manifestation of these violent passions – would begin two years after the book's publication. He correctly predicted that the coming war would involve both sides launching heavy bombings of each other's main cities. His depiction of the destroyed Unter Den Linden closely predicted its actual fate in the war. However, Wells wrongly thought that land fighting would quickly bog down, as in World War I, and that tanks would prove completely ineffective.

In Wells' future, submarines become the launching pads for "air torpedoes" (submarine-launched ballistic missiles) carrying weapons of mass destruction. This enables nations to threaten the destruction of places halfway around the world. This would not come true in World War II, but instead in later decades.

The Second World War ends with no victor but total exhaustion, collapse and disintegration of both involved and neutral countries, all affected by the deepening economic crisis. Nearly all governments break down, and a devastating plague in 1955 and 1956 kills approximately half of humanity. Civilization nearly ends.

A benevolent dictatorship, the Dictatorship of the Air, arises from the controllers of the world's surviving transport systems, who are the only people with global power. The dictatorship promotes science, enforces Basic English as a global lingua franca and eradicates all religions, setting the world on the road to a utopia. When the dictatorship chooses to execute a subject, the condemned is given a chance to take a poison tablet modeled on the hemlock given to Socrates.

The achievement of a classless society is not via a Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat, which Wells rejected. Rather, the working class is "pulled upwards" and eliminated in several generations of upward social mobility, leaving a humanity entirely composed of "middle class intellectuals". The limited amount of physical labor still needed is performed by the world's youth, who undergo two years of "labor conscription" instead of military conscription, which is no longer needed.

After around a hundred years, the Dictatorship of the Air is overthrown in a bloodless coup. The former rulers are sent into honorable retirement and the world state "withers away". The last part of the book details the utopian world that emerges. The aim of this utopian world is to produce a world society made up entirely of polymaths, every one of its members being the intellectual equal of the greatest geniuses of the past.

Suppression of religion

A major aspect of the creation of the World State is the abolition of all organized religion, a step deemed indispensable to giving the emerging "Modern State" a monopoly over education and the complete ability to mold new generations of humanity.