Even though the roofing iron arrived yesterday, today is a down-day because my helper hasn't turned up for work and those 4-metre-long sheets are far too heavy and awkward to handle on my own. Work is scheduled to resume on Thursday.
Which gives me time to look at another "Shape of Things To Come" (any excuse to get back to reading will do me! 😀) Of course, I had read H.G Wells' "The War of the Worlds" and "The Time Machine", and had skipped through "The Island of Doctor Moreau", but this one had escaped me.
Written as an edited version of notes kept by an eminent diplomat, a Dr Philip Raven, who had dream visions of a history textbook published in 2106 and wrote down what he could remember of it, it can be seen 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 another thirty years.
The book was adapted - well, kind of - by Wells himself as the 1936 film "Things To Come", but it wasn't exactly faithful in detail to the book.
A recent audiobook adaptation follows quite closely the original book, so if you don't want to read the book, click below, sit back and enjoy!
