Things to Come: A Film Story Based on the Material Contained in His History of the Future “The Shape of Things to Come” was published by the Cresset Press in 1935 as a companion to the Alexander Korda film production that would be released the following year. The book is a peculiar hybrid — part screenplay, part novelization, part manifesto — and represents Wells’s most direct attempt to reach a mass audience with his vision of humanity’s future.
The Book and the Film
Wells was intimately involved in the Korda production — more so than any author had ever been involved in a film adaptation. He wrote the screenplay (and rewrote it repeatedly, clashing with director William Cameron Menzies), attended production meetings, and vetted the designs. The published text reflects this involvement: it reads less like a novel than like a director’s vision, describing scenes in visual terms and interpolating political argument.
The story covers a century of future history. “Everytown” (transparently London) is devastated by a world war that begins in 1940. Civilization collapses. A plague sweeps the world. Warlords rule the ruins. Eventually, a technocratic elite called “Wings Over the World” — aviators and engineers, based in Basra — reconquers and rebuilds civilization. By 2036, humanity has achieved utopia: underground cities, space travel, peace.
The film, released in February 1936, was the most expensive British production of its time. Its design — by Vincent Korda, with contributions from Moholy-Nagy and Fernand Léger — created some of the most iconic images in science fiction cinema: the devastated city, the glass-and-chrome utopia, the space gun. The final sequence, in which humanity launches its first mission to the Moon, ends with the famous speech: “All the universe — or nothingness. Which shall it be?”
Themes
The necessity of catastrophe — Wells’s persistent argument: humanity will not voluntarily reform. Only total destruction can clear the ground for rational reconstruction.
Technocracy — the rebuilt world is governed by scientists and engineers, not politicians. This reflects Wells’s deepening disillusionment with democracy in the 1930s.
The visual imagination — the published text reveals Wells thinking in images. His descriptions of the destroyed and rebuilt cities anticipate post-apocalyptic and utopian visual conventions that would dominate science fiction for decades.
Collecting Things to Come
First edition (Cresset Press, London, 1935): Blue cloth binding with gilt lettering. Illustrated with stills from the film.
Market values (with dust jacket):
- Fine in dust jacket: $600–$1,500
- Very good in dust jacket: $250–$600
- Without dust jacket: $75–$200
First American edition (Macmillan, New York, 1935): $300–$800 in dust jacket.
The film’s enduring reputation as a visual masterpiece — it is consistently cited as one of the most important science fiction films ever made — sustains interest in the book.