What is Coming? A Forecast of Things after the War — Context and Discussion

A Prophet’s Method and Voice

Wells distinguishes his approach from traditional prophecy by aligning it with scientific forecasting. He asserts that “everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is here—for anyone who has eyes to see,” but admits that some things require “eyes of superhuman penetration.” This framing allows him to claim authority while acknowledging uncertainty. His tone is deliberately provocative: he dismisses the tourist who thinks of past walkers in the Coliseum, countering with the Futurist mind that thinks of “the men who will.” The prose is direct, often sarcastic, and built on contrasts—between the certain (next Christmas, tides of 1960) and the obscure (the “jumping cat within the human skull”). Wells positions himself as a sharp, observant man willing to risk answers, and his voice carries the reader through a series of bold assertions.

Education as a Target

In a sustained attack on British schooling, Wells argues that the classical curriculum produces “habits of busy futility and petty pedantry.” He singles out the teaching of Latin and Greek by instructors who “half know” the languages, calling the ordinary degree man a “failed Greek scholar.” The Modern History School at Oxford is dismissed as “the queerest collection of chunks of reading.” Wells insists that any study must be undertaken “in grim earnest and done,” and recommends dropping Greek from the general curriculum due to a lack of competent teachers. He advocates for practical language learning—French, German, English—as “governess languages” to be mastered by fifteen. The passage is notable for its specificity: Wells names institutions, cites examples, and uses vivid metaphors like “jack-daw collection” to drive his point home.

Pace and Structure of Argument

The book’s argumentative rhythm shifts between broad theoretical claims and concrete, sometimes scathing, examples. In the education chapter, Wells moves from a general principle about “character-forming” value to a detailed indictment of classical pedagogy, then to a prescription for reform. This pattern—principle, critique, remedy—recurs throughout the excerpts. The pace is brisk, with short, punchy sentences alternating with longer, more elaborate ones. Wells often uses rhetorical questions (“What was it we overlooked?”) and direct address to engage the reader. The structure of the work, with twelve chapters covering topics from socialism to the new map of Europe, suggests a systematic attempt to apply his forecasting method to multiple domains, though the excerpts only reveal part of that architecture.

Readers approaching What is Coming? should expect a polemic as much as a prediction. Wells’s voice is the engine of the book: confident, caustic, and relentlessly forward-looking. The excerpts show a writer who uses specific, often personal, examples to illustrate larger arguments, and who is unafraid to name names and institutions. Pay attention to how he builds his case—from principle to example to prescription—and how his tone shifts between analytical detachment and outright scorn. The book is best read as a document of its moment, revealing how a futurist mind processed the upheaval of World War I.

I often find Wells’s forecast resting beside the regimental record, and think how strangely they keep company — one dreaming of futures, the other remembering boys who paid for them. Both were written in the same urgency, same hope. Somewhere between prophecy and memory lies the quiet truth. The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 — Themes and Context holds what Wells could only guess at.