|
''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. ==Plot== 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": #Today And Tomorrow: The Age of Frustration Dawns – The history of the world up to 1933. #The Days After Tomorrow: The Age of Frustration – 1933–1960. #The World Renaissance: The Birth of the Modern State – 1960–1978. #The Modern State Militant – 1978–2059. #The Modern State in Control of Life – 2059 to New Year's Day 2106. ''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. Wells then envisages a benevolent dictatorship, "The Dictatorship of the Air", arising from the controllers of the world's surviving transport systems, who are the only people with global power. This dictatorship promotes science, enforces Basic English as a global lingua franca and eradicates all religions, setting the world on the road to a peaceful utopia. When the dictatorship chooses to murder a subject, the condemned person is given a chance to take a poison tablet. Eventually, after about 100 years of reshaping 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". The last part of the book is a detailed description of the utopian world that emerges. The ultimate aim of this utopian world is to produce a world society composed entirely of polymaths, each and every one of its members the intellectual equal of the greatest geniuses of the past. The book displays one of the earliest uses of the abbreviation "C.E.", which Wells explains as "Christian Era", but it is now more usually understood as "Common Era".〔.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Shape of Things to Come」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|