The release of <i>Things to Come</i> in 1936 was one of the key moments in the history of science fiction in the cinema. The film was the brainchild of H. G. Wells, whose worldwide reputation as a thinker had persuaded its producer, Alexander Korda, to offer him a contract giving him virtually total control over the project.<br> Korda drafted a dazzling array of talents to render into pictures Wells's ideas of the future a hundred years hence. His brother, Vincent Korda, a distinguished painter, was employed as art director, and the Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy contributed ideas for futuristic sets. As director, Korda hired William Cameron Menzies, who had practically invented the profession of Hollywood art director through his work with Douglas Fairbanks on <i>The Thief of Baghdad </i>and Rudolf Valentino on <i>Son of the Sheik</i>, and whose career would climax with <i>Gone With the WInd.</i><br> The result was a landmark in cinematic design. Christopher Frayling shows, with a wealth of illustrations, how the boldness and brilliance of the sets and costumes mark out <i>Things to Come </i>as British cinema's greatest contribution to the science fiction genre, amply justifying his judgement that "<i>Things to Come </i>is to modernism as <i>Blade Runner</i> is to postmodernism."