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"Things To Come" (1936) is H.G. Wells' speculative version of history from 1936 to 2036 in which war blasts Everytown, England and the rest of the world into a Medieval state where warlords provide some measure of order (with a side of brutality). Peace is attained only when the engineers and mechanics of Wings Over The World use their superior technology to force the matter. But the story doesn't end there—after the benevolent dictatorship of the technocracy has "cleaned things up," a faction forms to rebel against the speed at which invention transforms culture, leading to a dramatic showdown at a rocket launching pad.
The genre of this story is often called "Speculative Fiction," which includes as subgenres sci-fi, fantasy, horror and the classification that's often given to "Things To Come": future history. Wells was a master of speculative fiction, and wrote the screenplay based on his book, "The Shape of Things To Come" (1933), in which he anticipated the Second World War and the devastating impact air warfare would have on Europe. Wells believed a world government was the solution to the ceaseless infection of war.
