A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future

In 1894, one of the wealthiest men in American history turned his gaze upward and asked: what does humanity's future look like? John Jacob Astor IV wrote this novel as a passionate side project, and the result is one of the very first science fiction stories ever published. Set in the year 2000 (our present), the book imagines Earth as a corporate technocracy where scientific progress has solved poverty and disease. When overpopulation threatens, three adventurers, Dr. Cortlandt, Colonel Bearwarden, and young Richard Ayrault, board the spaceship Callisto and journey to Jupiter using a newly discovered force called apergy. What they find on the gas giant is both wondrous and dangerous: alien landscapes, untamed beasts, and forms of life no human has ever seen. But it is Saturn, with its mysterious rings and profound secrets about fate and destiny, that delivers the book's transcendent final act. Read it as historical curiosity and you'll be entertained. Read it as a window into the soul of Victorian optimism, and you'll be moved.