External links
- The complete short fiction of H. G. Wells at Standard Ebooks
- "A Story of the Days to Come" at Project Gutenberg
A Story of the Days to Come public domain audiobook at LibriVox
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| "A Story of Days To Come" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by H. G. Wells | |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication | |
| Published in | The Pall Mall Magazine |
| Media type | Print (Magazine) |
| Publication date | June–October 1899 |
"A Story of the Days To Come" is a novella by H. G. Wells comprising five chapters that was first published in the June to October 1899 issues of The Pall Mall Magazine . It was later included in an 1899 collection of Wells's short stories, Tales of Space and Time .
The novella depicts two lovers in a dystopian future London of the 22nd century and explores the implications of excessive urbanisation, class warfare, and advances in the technology of medicine, communication, transportation, and agriculture. Like When the Sleeper Wakes , published in the same year, the novella extrapolates the trends Wells observed in 19th-century Victorian London two hundred years into the future.
The London of the early 22nd century has a population of over 30 million, with the lower classes living in subterranean dwellings, and the middle and upper classes living in skyscrapers and largely communal accommodations. Moving walkways interconnect the city, with fast air-travel and superhighways available between cities. The countryside is largely abandoned.
Among other things, this novella appears to anticipate technical developments toward massive urbanisation, skyscrapers, moving sidewalks, superhighways, advertising, mass media, psychotherapy, and intercontinental aircraft traveling at jet speeds.
Socially and economically, however, it predicts a very stratified class structure and a largely communal society where few mega-corporations control all means of production. It also predicts hypnosis as a supplement or replacement to psychology, creches where child-rearing is transferred from parents to professionals, and a megapolis served by citywide moving walkways and escalators, with enormous cities (four in England) separated by abandoned countryside.
A wealthy heiress falls in love with a middle-class worker of romantically quaint disposition. In part one, the woman's father hires a hypnotist to program his daughter to instead choose a more appropriate suitor selected by him. When that ploy is unraveled, the couple secretly marry and flee into the abandoned countryside and attempt to live off the land. After being driven back into the city, the couple live a modest middle-class lifestyle until their money runs out. At that point, they move to the "underneath" area of London to toil in physical labour as lower-class workers. Finally, their issues are resolved through the machinations of her spurned would-be suitor, and they resume a middle-class lifestyle.
A Story of the Days to Come public domain audiobook at LibriVox | International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. A Christmas Carol recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdiction. It is used as a residential, office building, or other functions including hotel, retail, or with multiple purposes combined. Residential high-rise buildings are also known in some varieties of English, such as British English, as tower blocks and may be referred to as MDUs, standing for multi-dwelling units. A very tall high-rise building is referred to as a skyscraper.
The Postman is a post-apocalyptic dystopia science fiction novel by David Brin. It is about a man wandering the desolate Oregon countryside who finds a United States Postal Service uniform, which he puts on and then claims he is a mail carrier and federal inspector for the "Restored United States of America". His mail service and claims about the return of a central government gives hope to the people, who are threatened by a murderous, neo-feudalist militia.
A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of enclosed or covered footbridges that protect pedestrians from the weather. Open-top modern skyways in mountains now often have glass bottoms. Sometimes enclosed urban skywalks are made almost totally from glass, including ceilings, walls and floors. Also, some urban skyways function strictly as linear parks designed for walking.
A moving walkway, also known as an autowalk, moving pavement, moving sidewalk, people-mover, travolator, or travelator, is a slow-moving conveyor mechanism that transports people across a horizontal or inclined plane over a short to medium distance. Moving walkways can be used by standing or walking on them. They are often installed in pairs, one for each direction.
The Iron Heel is a political novel in the form of science fiction by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.
A terrace, terraced house (UK), or townhouse (US) is a kind of medium-density housing that first started in 16th century Europe with a row of joined houses sharing side walls. In the United States and Canada these are known as row houses or row homes, commonly found in older cities such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Toronto.
Gründerzeit was the economic phase in 19th-century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873.
English society comprises the group behaviour of the English people, and of collective social interactions, organisation and political attitudes in England. The social history of England evidences many social and societal changes over the history of England, from Anglo-Saxon England to the contemporary forces upon the Western world. These major social changes have occurred both internally and in its relationship with other nations. The themes of social history include demographic history, labour history and the working class, women's history, family, the history of education in England, rural and agricultural history, urban history and industrialisation.
A fellah is a peasant, usually a farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for "ploughman" or "tiller".
The Penelopiad is a novella by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It was published in 2005 as part of the first set of books in the Canongate Myth Series where contemporary authors rewrite ancient myths. In The Penelopiad, Penelope reminisces on the events of the Odyssey, life in Hades, Odysseus, Helen of Troy, and her relationships with her parents. A Greek chorus of the twelve maids, who Odysseus believed were disloyal and whom Telemachus hanged, interrupt Penelope's narrative to express their view on events. The maids' interludes use a new genre each time, including a jump-rope rhyme, a lament, an idyll, a ballad, a lecture, a court trial and several types of songs.
The Greater London Built-up Area, or Greater London Urban Area, is a conurbation in south-east England that constitutes the continuous urban sprawl of London, and includes surrounding adjacent urban towns as defined by the Office for National Statistics. It is the largest urban area in the United Kingdom with a population of 9,787,426 in 2011.
Tales of Space and Time is a fantasy and science fiction collection of three short stories and two novellas written by the English author H. G. Wells between 1897 and 1898. It was first published by Doubleday & McClure Co. in 1899. All the stories had first been published in various monthly periodicals and this was the first volume to collect these stories.
The Museum of Ethnography is a national museum in Budapest, Hungary.
The Broadway–Chambers Building is an 18-story office building at 277 Broadway, on the northwest corner with Chambers Street, in the Civic Center and Tribeca neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. Completed by 1900 to designs by architect Cass Gilbert, the Broadway–Chambers Building was the first of several that Gilbert designed in the city.
Rivierenbuurt is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands. The neighbourhood is situated in the eastern part of the borough of Amsterdam-Zuid, bordered by the river Amstel to the east, the Boerenwetering canal in the west, the Amstelkanaal in the north and the A10 motorway in the south. In 2013, the Rivierenbuurt had approximately 28,400 residents.
During the 1920s, Soviet urban planning ideologies established along two competing lines: the urbanist and disurbanist schools. Whilst the proposed form of the city differed between the two ideologies, their visions of social organization for communal living overlapped.
Old New York (1924) is a collection of four novellas by Edith Wharton, revolving around upper-class New York City society in the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s.
Urban planning is a technical and political process concerned with the use of land and design of the urban environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas such as transportation and distribution networks.
The Black Death was present in Italy between 1347-1348. Sicily and the Italian Peninsula was the first area in then Catholic Western Europe to be reached by the bubonic plague pandemic known as the Black Death, which reached the region by an Italian ship from the Crimea which landed in Messina in Sicily in October 1347.
