I'm Reading The Book

I just re-read it as well: more intresting reading it second time around and it isn't that much hard work, it actually has more resonance now than when I first read it:

No gas of peace dropped on Everytown(London), but instead dropped on the Pope in a renewed 1960s-70s Fascist Italy complete with Blackshirts,Fasces and a new Duce. The Pope is blessing an illegal Air Force to rebel against WOW and and an Air Squadron drops the gas of peace ('Pacificin'), similar to the film one person only dies the rest are unconscious for 36 hours only its a Cardinal who becomes the last Martyr of the Catholic church.

I doubt you'd get away with gassing the Pope in a film in the 1930s and I doubt you'd get away with it now.However the Ralph Richardson 'Boss' character was generally recognised at the time as a parody of Mussolini (not Hitler) and the film was banned in Italy.

Next on the Religion hit list for the Air Dictatorship Squadrons is Islam and they fly into Mecca to 'close down' the holy places without attracting so much as a complaint from Bin Laden on a video, let alone a Fatwa and Jihadi Terrorist campaign.

The Air Dictatorship closed down all the Kosher Butchers and thats all it took to end Judaism too, This is an interesting quote from the book:

'After the (1st) World War the orthodox Jews played but a poor part in the early attempts to formulate the Modern State, being far more preoccupied with a dream called Zionism, the dream of a fantastic independent state all of their own in Palestine...Only a psychoanalyst could begin to tell for what they wanted this Zionist state for."

By 2020 (10 yrs time!)all religion is moribund and on its way out due to the 'Modern State' running all the schools since the 60s.

There is no John or Oawald Cabal in the book, instead the main dude is called Arden Essenden who gets knocked off in a Stalinist type Purge for the supreme act of treason against the Air Dictatorship for... having a fling with a woman.

I personally don't think everything in HG Wells' parallel universe is bad, there's no war in his alternative 2010 and people are more optimistic about the future. The world is more spacious as theres 550 million people on the planet rather than 7 Billion in our world. True, the reason why there's less people on the planet is because the population was decimated through maculated fever and famine and the 'Modern State'is un democratic to put it mildly. And has anyone noticed how Raymond Masseys John and Oswald Cabal character resembles Tony Blair, especially in the later part of the film? Scary!

Poor Old Boss with his flags and his folly. Dead and his world dead with him. Now for the rule of the Airmen.