Shadows of the Future: H G Wells, Science, Fiction and Prophecy (Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, 6) - Softcover

Shadows of the Future identifies the attempt to imagine possible futures as the unifying principle behind Wells's diverse and sometimes wayward literary career. The book unravels the complex layers of meaning in The Time Machine, and shows how throughout his life he sought to exploit the potential of literary and cultural prophecy in new ways.

Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy identifies the attempt to imagine possible futures as the unifying principle behind H. G. Wells' diverse and sometimes wayward literary career. Shadows of the Future unravels the complex layers of meaning in The Time Machine, and shows how throughout his life he sought to exploit the potential of literary and cultural prophecy in new ways. Well's assumption of the prophet's role is related to his championship of the modern scientific outlook, and to the theory and practice of science fiction and utopian literature. Patrick Parrinder explores the connections between novelty and repetition, between imagining the future and imagining the past, and between prophecy and parody as literary modes. Parrinder also relates Wells' fiction to his nonfiction and looks at the uneasy relationship that was his utopianism to literary prophecy, and the paradoxes inherent in the militant internationalism of the "prophet at large". Wells' influence is also traced in a study of the antiutopian fictions of Zamyatin and Orwell, and in a broad account of the connections between science fiction and the scientific outlook down to our own time. -- Midwest Book Review