A Victorian Science Fiction Reader

Early science fiction. Will terrorists get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction? Is there life on Mars? Does punishing criminals do any good? If we could travel into the future, what would we see? Is marriage passé? Will humans be supplanted by machines? Will America collapse? Could solar energy from the Sahara desert become a major power source? Can there be any place for euthanasia in a civilized society? All these questions were raised in the Victorian age and are addressed in this volume. Authors represented: Edwin Abbott Abbott, Grant Allen, John Jacob Astor IV, Edward Bellamy, Samuel Butler, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Frances Power Cobbe, Alexander Craig, Robert Cromie, Kenneth Folingsby, Percy Greg, George Griffith, W. D. Howells, Richard Jefferies, John Uri Lloyd, Richard A. Locke, John Ames Mitchell, William Morris, Fitz-James O'Brien, Edgar Allan Poe, M.P. Shiel, Anthony Trollope, H.G. Wells