The Shape of Things to Come, by H. G. Wells

Introduction: The Dream Book of Dr. Philip Raven

Book the First: Today and Tomorrow: The Age of Frustration Dawns

1. A Chronological Note
2. How the Idea and Hope of the Modern World State First Appeared
3. The Accumulating Disproportions of the Old Order
4. Early Attempts to Understand and Deal with These Disproportions; The Criticisms of Karl Marx and Henry George
5. The Way in Which Competition and Monetary Inefficiency Strained the Old Order
6. The Paradox of Over-Production and Its Relation to War
7. The Great War of 1914-1918
8. The Impulse to Abolish War; The Episode of the Ford Peace Ship
9. The Direct Action of the Armament Industries in Maintaining War Stresses
10. Versailles: Seed Bed of Disasters
11. The Impulse to Abolish War: Why the League of Nations Failed to Pacify the World
12. The Breakdown of “Finance” and Social Morale after Versailles
13. 1933: “Progress” Comes to a Halt

Book the Second: The Days After Tomorrow: The Age of Frustration

1. The London Conference: the Crowning Failure of the Old Governments; The Spread of Dictatorships and Fascisms
2. The Sloughing of the Old Educational Tradition
3. Disintegration and Crystallization in the Social Magma. The Gangster and Militant Political Organizations
4. Changes in War Practice after the World War
5. The Fading Vision of a World Pax: Japan Reverts to Warfare
6. The Western Grip on Asia Relaxes
7. The Modern State and Germany
8. A Note on Hate and Cruelty
9. The Last War Cyclone, 1940-50
10. The Raid of the Germs
11. Europe in 1960
12. America in Liquidation

Book the Third: The World Renascence: The Birth of the Modern State

1. The Plan of the Modern State Is Worked Out
2. Thought and Action: the New Model of Revolution
3. The Technical Revolutionary
4. Prophets, Pioneers, Fanatics and Murdered Men
5. The First Conference at Basra: 1965
6. The Growth of Resistance to the Sea and Air Ways Control
7. Intellectual Antagonism to the Modern State
8. The Second Conference at Basra, 1978
9. “Three Courses of Action”
10. The Life-Time Plan
11. The Real Struggle for Government Begins

Book the Fourth: The Modern State Militant

1. Gap in the Text
2. Melodramatic Interlude
3. Futile Insurrection
4. The Schooling of Mankind
5. The Text Resumes: The Tyranny of the Second Council
6. Æsthetic Frustration: The Note Books of Ariston Theotocopulos
7. The Declaration of Mégève

Book the Fifth: The Modern State in Control of Life

1. Monday Morning in the Creation of a New World
2. Keying Up the Planet
3. Geogonic Planning
4. Changes in the Control of Behaviour
5. Organization of Plenty
6. The Average Man Grows Older and Wiser
7. Language and Mental Growth
8. Sublimation of Interest
9. A New Phase in the History of Life