Chris reviewed The shape of things to come by H. G. Wells (Duplicate) (Penguin classics)
None
3 stars
A very slow read. Reading it really only for the Basic English bit - Wells, like Eric Blair, was a fan of BE but later realised it could too easily be used for state control of the population. There is a lot of speculation here, much of it fairly accurate, especially about its own near future (it was published in 1933), but by this point in his life the Wells of the Time Machine, War of the Worlds, Island of Dr Moreau, and even Kipps and the History of Mr Polly, was gone, and he had become weary and crushed - something I remember my dad saying many years ago, specifically about the very late Wells work Mind at the End of its Tether. He was at the end of his own tether and no longer what he had been.
A very slow read. Reading it really only for the Basic English bit - Wells, like Eric Blair, was a fan of BE but later realised it could too easily be used for state control of the population. There is a lot of speculation here, much of it fairly accurate, especially about its own near future (it was published in 1933), but by this point in his life the Wells of the Time Machine, War of the Worlds, Island of Dr Moreau, and even Kipps and the History of Mr Polly, was gone, and he had become weary and crushed - something I remember my dad saying many years ago, specifically about the very late Wells work Mind at the End of its Tether. He was at the end of his own tether and no longer what he had been.
