The book offers a fictional account of life in the year 2000. It contains abundant speculation about technological invention, including descriptions of a worldwide telephone network, solar power, air travel, space travel to the planets Saturn and Jupiter, and terraforming engineering projects — damming the Arctic Ocean, and an adjustment of the axial tilt of the Earth
Jupiter proves to be a jungle world, with flesh-eating plants, vampire bats, giant snakes and mastodons, and flying lizards. The Americans discover a wealth of exploitable resources: iron, silver, gold, lead, copper, coal, and oil.
Saturn, in contrast, is an ancient world of silent spirits. These beings provide the explorers with foresight of their own deaths. One of the spirits, a deceased bishop, tells the voyagers about the icy world Cassandra, which orbits the Sun beyond Neptune and is home to the souls of unworthy Earthlings.
Talk about a curveball. Who would have expected him to write something like this?
Astor had planned to finance Teslas world wireless sytem..... Imagine how radically different the 20th century would have been if that went ahead.
Maybe thats the curveball, his heirs mount a comeback and revolutionize the 21st century. Ha… a long shot, I know.
Did you that John Jacob Astor IV (who died on the titanic) wrote a Science Fiction novel?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Journey_in_Other_Worlds
Talk about a curveball. Who would have expected him to write something like this?