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The Shape of Things to Come
Every action has consequences. One confrontation, one punch, one bullet - something as simple as a gesture on a train - all can change the course of history. British diplomat Dr Philip Raven knows the world is on a knife edge. But he is about to see how history might have played out differently. How there could be a better future for those who dare to grasp it. An emissary from that future has come to show him.
- GenresScience Fiction
Audiobook
Published May 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 10, 2022
{3.5 stars}
I haven’t got around to reading the novel by H G Wells that reports furfure events, but it’s impressive how this audio drama, by the BBC, has adapted almost 600 pages into 2 hours.
Overall I was captivated by the banter between Dr Philip Raven and Jane (played by Sam Troughton and Nicola Walker). It was light, frothy, comical and wonderfully entertaining. Where I got lost is how much information was needed to be packed into this play – where when it finished it was so sudden that I wasn’t sure if I had missed something despite having understood the main details of the plot.
So I’m kind of disappointed, the audio drama is told in two parts, for the first I was mostly in suspense of the responsibility Dr Philip Raven has to bare to ensure a better future, but the second half of this audio drama didn’t have this same burst of energy – I’m guessing because it still had a lot of details from the novel to cover and so lost its way.
Regardless, listening to this makes me now want to read the original work by H G Wells.
I haven’t got around to reading the novel by H G Wells that reports furfure events, but it’s impressive how this audio drama, by the BBC, has adapted almost 600 pages into 2 hours.
Overall I was captivated by the banter between Dr Philip Raven and Jane (played by Sam Troughton and Nicola Walker). It was light, frothy, comical and wonderfully entertaining. Where I got lost is how much information was needed to be packed into this play – where when it finished it was so sudden that I wasn’t sure if I had missed something despite having understood the main details of the plot.
So I’m kind of disappointed, the audio drama is told in two parts, for the first I was mostly in suspense of the responsibility Dr Philip Raven has to bare to ensure a better future, but the second half of this audio drama didn’t have this same burst of energy – I’m guessing because it still had a lot of details from the novel to cover and so lost its way.
Regardless, listening to this makes me now want to read the original work by H G Wells.
October 11, 2020
Well, I admit I goofed. I got the book From which this audio-drama is based mixed up with another H.G. Wells book wherein he attempts to predict the events of the future, The Sleeper Awakes. I’ve read The Sleeper Awakes but I’ve not read The Shape of Things to Come, at least not yet. I have seen the film Things To Come (Menzies, 1936) (and laughably remade (?) as The Shape of Things to Come (McGowan, 1979)) that reputedly is not a very effective adaptation, but as the screenplay was written by Wells, a lot can be forgiven. The book is actually more of a examination of events that have not occurred yet, or more simply put, it’s a textbook of the history of the future. But as Wells didn’t really predict the future as he did offer impressions of what things might be like. This is always the problem with attempting to predict the future, the specifics are almost always wrong, but the generalities, at least with someone who knows what they’re doing, can be quite astonishing. Wells has a remarkable track record, having predicted areal warfare, gas warfare, tanks, world wide warfare, radioactive warfare, radioactive wastelands, pandemics, just to name a few, all before the start of the First World War. This adaptation takes some liberties and offers Wells’ vision of the future as a variant history, an alternate timeline. This allows for the inclusion of Wells’ predictions of his future to exist as this alternate reality, and it works surprisingly well. Although how I feel, once I’ve gotten around to finally reading the book ... well, I’ll just have to wait and see what the shape of things to come, the future, has in store for me.
May 10, 2020
The Shape of Things to Come.
Oh wow.
This was certainly impressive.
And parts of it are scarily prophetic- like the global pandemics killing a large proportion of the population.
From reading reviews, I had feared that this was basically the communist manifesto.
Well, it was not far off...
However.
It was a great emotionally rousing piece of art.
And it even made me cry!
Now that is something, not many audios have made me cry lately!
But as good as it was...
I am not sure I am on board with the ending.
I am not surprised this has been called left extremist propaganda.
Oh wow.
This was certainly impressive.
And parts of it are scarily prophetic- like the global pandemics killing a large proportion of the population.
From reading reviews, I had feared that this was basically the communist manifesto.
Well, it was not far off...
However.
It was a great emotionally rousing piece of art.
And it even made me cry!
Now that is something, not many audios have made me cry lately!
But as good as it was...
I am not sure I am on board with the ending.
I am not surprised this has been called left extremist propaganda.
September 16, 2020
The trouble with adapting The Shape of Things to Come is that it's essentially a plotless novel. Not really the typical structure of fiction, rather, it's a "history of the future" that H.G. Wells wrote between the wars. Wells' protagonist, Philip Raven, has dreams of a future history textbook from 2106 and writes down what he remembers, with the events occurring between 1933 and 1978 paving the way for an eventual one-world government.
So the first problem facing a modern adaptation is how to deal with the fact that most of what was predicted never came to pass. Guy Adams solves this by placing all of Wells' predictions into an alternate timeline. The story in this adaptation is of Philip Raven, UK representative to the UN (played by Sam Troughton), being taken on a tour of an alternate world history by a woman named Jane (Nicola Walker), a historian from the far future.
Her alternate timeline which she presents as a utopian future, is in danger of collapsing in favor of the real timeline (real history, where none of Wells' predictions happened). She has come back in time because only Philip Raven can take an action that will set history right again.
So that's an interesting idea, and a sort of twist on the common trope of "history has gone off track and we must set it right." Star Trek, Doctor Who, countless science fiction has used this premise. Only instead of the protagonist trying to get his own history back on track, he's told that he must reject his own history in favor of someone else's? Now that's intriguing. What if someone appeared to you one day and said you were living in an alternate (worse) timeline, and you needed to do something to make it right again? Especially if you think that your timeline isn't so awful, and the allegedly "better" timeline doesn't sound all that great.
Jane shows Raven the alternate past from approximately WWII (in this case, a major conflict between Germany and Poland) up to the early 2000s. And it's not a good one. War, famine, epidemics of disease and mass deaths across the globe. Every one of those apocalyptic horsemen. So Raven must be convinced that as bad as this period appears to be in the alternate timeline, it does result in a better future -- a world-wide utopia. Should he act to create the conditions that will bring it about, even if they seem wrong?
Well, that's our story. And . . . I don't even know what to do with this. The whole thing is blatantly Marxist propaganda. Jane sings the praises of this supposedly utopian one-world government -- socialist of course, because that's what all the kids are into these days. She hates religion and praises its elimination in her timeline. The Catholic Church is shown to be the only organization working in opposition to the government, we're told it's made up of Italian fascists, and we get to witness their mass slaughter, . . . and Jane presents this as a positive development for the future.
Raven (and the audience) is hit on the head with pro-socialist propaganda for two hours until he finally agrees with Jane, at which point he's returned to his own timeline and presented with the thing that will apparently cause enough of an incident that the people will rise up and demand this commie-socialist-atheist future. We're never really told, but I'm thinking it's a suitcase bomb.
And again, I don't know what to do with this. The story ends abruptly with Raven choosing to bring about Jane's desired future. Does that make this a tragedy? Or are we really being asked to believe that this future as presented by Jane the Marxist is a desired utopia?
I kept waiting for the twist. Kept waiting for something to happen that makes Raven come to his senses, reveal Jane for the villain, and retain the historical status quo. But that twist never comes.
In one sense, this allows the adaptation to remain somewhat faithful to Wells' book: the future as he envisioned it actually happens. The only reason I give this two stars is because there's always the possibility that we are intended to take this story as a tragedy and a warning. But if the writer is asking us to believe that this will make for a better future, he's a historical nincompoop and a political ignoramus, and I award this audio drama ZERO stars.
So the first problem facing a modern adaptation is how to deal with the fact that most of what was predicted never came to pass. Guy Adams solves this by placing all of Wells' predictions into an alternate timeline. The story in this adaptation is of Philip Raven, UK representative to the UN (played by Sam Troughton), being taken on a tour of an alternate world history by a woman named Jane (Nicola Walker), a historian from the far future.
Her alternate timeline which she presents as a utopian future, is in danger of collapsing in favor of the real timeline (real history, where none of Wells' predictions happened). She has come back in time because only Philip Raven can take an action that will set history right again.
So that's an interesting idea, and a sort of twist on the common trope of "history has gone off track and we must set it right." Star Trek, Doctor Who, countless science fiction has used this premise. Only instead of the protagonist trying to get his own history back on track, he's told that he must reject his own history in favor of someone else's? Now that's intriguing. What if someone appeared to you one day and said you were living in an alternate (worse) timeline, and you needed to do something to make it right again? Especially if you think that your timeline isn't so awful, and the allegedly "better" timeline doesn't sound all that great.
Jane shows Raven the alternate past from approximately WWII (in this case, a major conflict between Germany and Poland) up to the early 2000s. And it's not a good one. War, famine, epidemics of disease and mass deaths across the globe. Every one of those apocalyptic horsemen. So Raven must be convinced that as bad as this period appears to be in the alternate timeline, it does result in a better future -- a world-wide utopia. Should he act to create the conditions that will bring it about, even if they seem wrong?
Well, that's our story. And . . . I don't even know what to do with this. The whole thing is blatantly Marxist propaganda. Jane sings the praises of this supposedly utopian one-world government -- socialist of course, because that's what all the kids are into these days. She hates religion and praises its elimination in her timeline. The Catholic Church is shown to be the only organization working in opposition to the government, we're told it's made up of Italian fascists, and we get to witness their mass slaughter, . . . and Jane presents this as a positive development for the future.
Raven (and the audience) is hit on the head with pro-socialist propaganda for two hours until he finally agrees with Jane, at which point he's returned to his own timeline and presented with the thing that will apparently cause enough of an incident that the people will rise up and demand this commie-socialist-atheist future. We're never really told, but I'm thinking it's a suitcase bomb.
And again, I don't know what to do with this. The story ends abruptly with Raven choosing to bring about Jane's desired future. Does that make this a tragedy? Or are we really being asked to believe that this future as presented by Jane the Marxist is a desired utopia?
I kept waiting for the twist. Kept waiting for something to happen that makes Raven come to his senses, reveal Jane for the villain, and retain the historical status quo. But that twist never comes.
In one sense, this allows the adaptation to remain somewhat faithful to Wells' book: the future as he envisioned it actually happens. The only reason I give this two stars is because there's always the possibility that we are intended to take this story as a tragedy and a warning. But if the writer is asking us to believe that this will make for a better future, he's a historical nincompoop and a political ignoramus, and I award this audio drama ZERO stars.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews