Things to Come: A Film Story Based on the Material Contained in His History of the Future “The Shape of Things to Come.”

WELLS, H.G. [Derrick de Marnay].

$2,750.00

Item Number: 143681

London: The Cresset Press, 1935.

First edition of the novelization of the classic 1936 film H. G. Wells’ Things to Come. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth. Signed by H.G. Wells and actor Derrick de Marnay on front free endpaper. Derrick de Marnay starred as Richard Gordon in the acclaimed 1936 film adaptation, Things to Come, directed by William Cameron Menzies. In near fine condition. A very sharp and unique signed example.

First published in 1933, The Shape of Things to Come takes the form of a future history that ends in 2106. A long economic slump causes a major war that leaves Europe devastated and threatened by the plague. In decades of chaos with much of the world reverting to medieval conditions, pilots and technicians formerly serving in various nations' air forces maintain a network of functioning air fields. Around this nucleus, technological civilization is rebuilt, with the pilots and other skilled technicians eventually seizing worldwide power and sweeping away the remnants of the old nation states. A number of Wells' short-term predictions would come true, such as the aerial bombing of whole cities presented in more detail than in his previous The War in the Air and the eventual development of weapons of mass destruction. The book was adapted into the 1936 film, Things to Come, directed by William Cameron Menzies and starring Derrick de Marnay as Richard Gordon. "Things to Come qualifies as the first true masterpiece of science fiction cinema" (Westfahl, Bio-Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Film).