BODYING forth the shape of things to come in the dream history of Dr. Phillip Raven must have been the most delightful of tasks to Mr. H. G. Wells. In it he had the joy of the prophet Isaiah in providing a doom for all his enemies, and in peopling a heaven with his chosen. The man of science, and the engineer, and the technician will form a holy trinity to rule this heaven on earth of A.D. 2105, and all will dwell on earth happily forever after.

With the writer's conception of the world to come one cannot quarrel. The future is a thing beyond the range of the most scientific criticism. If it is to Mr. Wells' fancy to picture the world of one-hundred and eighty years hence as a planet wholly civilized, gathered into one state, its trade perfected, its people lavishly provided with every necessity and every imaginable means of happiness, well ordered and well governed, none can gainsay him. If, in the course of showing the process by which this Utopia is achieved, he predicts devastating wars for the 1940's, complete breakdown of all trade in the sixties, the consequent reduction of all peoples to a semi-savage state, and the rescue of the populations from this distress by aviators and technicians, who, like the Hanseatic merchants, rule by control of communication, and civilize to maintain and improve their own position, that is Mr. Well's concern. He has license to provide the most startling phantasy.

But the author has not gone to the limits allowed by his medium. In view of the possibilities, and of the author's past performances, it is true praise to say that the work is in degree pedestrian. Its interest and its value are the greater in that the stagnation which he predicts seemed very near and real a short seven months ago. His vision has the greater authenticity in that it contains little that is incredible and nothing that is, to us, inconceivable. In short, the work is a serious attempt, unmarred by riotous imaginings, to show, in rough outline, the endings of our present paths and the new and better ways which mankind may tread, provided only that mankind has the intelligence, the will, and the courage. As a book showing a possible transition from this immediate world to a conceivable Utopia, the work is no mean effort.

With details in the production one can quarrel endlessly. It is easy to be shocked at the idea of Harvard as an intellectual Sargasso Sea in some years to come; one may point out that Dearborn, Michigan, hardly has the ingredients of a scientific oasis for the decade of mental famine; it seems a little chauvinistic of Mr. Wells to plunge the Irish deeper than any other nation into the abyss of economic collapse; he takes a malicious joy in attributing the ruin of New York to its jerry-built skyscrapers. Yet these are but minor points--some well taken, withal. Such details must occasionally be wildly wrong; such detail is of utmost necessity to the interest and vividness of the prediction.

The writing of the book is sloppy, a thing to be expected. The sloppiness is increased by Mr. Wells' quaint gesture of including a few patent words, similar to the synthetic vocabulary of Mr. James Joyce, to lend the writings of the future an unnecessary flavor of impossibility. Be it regarded as history or romance, "The Shape of Things to Come" is faulty and chaotic in organization; this short-coming is aggravated by the fact that its creator neglected to instruct his secretary to make that handy appendage, an index.

Aside from this quibbling, Mr. Wells' latest book is undoubtedly the best that he has produced in many years. It is a resume of the most dire forecasts and the brightest predictions for the future. It shows the striking power of imagination absent from such night-mares as "The Bulpington of Blup," and the ideas presented in it are worthy of more than dinner-table consideration. It is absurd to take some portions of it seriously as it is foolish to take others lightly. To appraise it absolutely is impossible till the future reveals its secrets; it is an interesting book, worthy of the spare moments of any intelligent person.