H.G. Wells, the inventor of the concept of the time machine and the phrase the Shape of Things to Come 'described his life's work as one of critical anticipation'. "Shadows of the Future" identifies this attempt to imagine possible futures as the unifying principle behind Wells' diverse and sometimes wayward literary career. Described by John Middleton Murry as 'the last prophet of bourgeois Europe', he was also its first futurologist.
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Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy identifies the attempt to imagine possible futures as the unifying principle behind H. G. Wells' diverse and sometimes wayward literary career. Shadows of the Future unravels the complex layers of meaning in The Time Machine, and shows how throughout his life he sought to exploit the potential of literary and cultural prophecy in new ways. Well's assumption of the prophet's role is related to his championship of the modern scientific outlook, and to the theory and practice of science fiction and utopian literature. Patrick Parrinder explores the connections between novelty and repetition, between imagining the future and imagining the past, and between prophecy and parody as literary modes. Parrinder also relates Wells' fiction to his nonfiction and looks at the uneasy relationship that was his utopianism to literary prophecy, and the paradoxes inherent in the militant internationalism of the "prophet at large". Wells' influence is also traced in a study of the antiutopian fictions of Zamyatin and Orwell, and in a broad account of the connections between science fiction and the scientific outlook down to our own time. -- Midwest Book Review
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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Antiutopianism at its best!,
This review is from: Shadows of the Future: H.G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy (Utopianism and Communitarianism) (Hardcover)
This book suceeds in it's purpose of conveying the blatant themes that run through all of H.G. Wells writing. The idea of a deteriorating society rather than a society that approaches an utopia is common throughout. People's apathy destructs society and crumbles the human existance, to such an extent that all forms of organized life wil eventually disappear.
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