H. G. Wells wrote the screen adaptation of his future history, The Shape of Things to Come, to give a dramatic setting to his sweeping vision of a world first devastated by war then resurrected by a corps of brilliant engineers. The result was Things to Come, a 1936 film produced by Alexander Korda and […]
The Shape of Things to Come by H.G. Wells
On with Vintage Science Fiction Month! H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come (1933) purports to be the “dreamed” history of the next hundred and fifty years of human experience. Be warned: it’s serious future fictional history without a character or action-driven plot, though there are a few strong personalities who take the spotlight […]
The Dystopian Lawyer Series by Christopher Brown
Christopher Brown’s two-book set (Rule of Capture and Failed State) about his hapless yet strangely effective dystopian lawyer, Donnie Kimoe, may come too close to our dystopian present for comfort, but they also shine with ideas about a better way to envision the future. As he put it in a recent essay in Literary Hub: […]
Agency by William Gibson: Acting in the Time of the Jackpot
William Gibson’s Agency, building on ideas, setting and characters in The Peripheral, is all about the individual’s capacity to act, or agency. Trouble is everyone in the story seems to lack it or at best remains mystified about whether or not they have any agency. So how do you tell a story in which the […]
