A Journey in Other Worlds

John Jacob "Jack" Astor IV (July 13, 1864 - April 15, 1912) US businessman, inventor and author, great-grandson of the celebrated fur trader; he was one of four authors of science fiction (the others are Jacques Futrelle, F D Millet and W T Stead) known to have gone down with the Titanic. His A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future (1894) features an Antigravity device - "apergy", borrowed from Percy Greg's Across the Zodiac (1880) - that powers a craft in a tour of the solar system in 2000 CE. Earth itself is a Utopia dominated by a capitalistic America, the countries of Europe having succumbed to socialism; one of the protagonists of the tale runs the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company whose goal is to rectify Earth's axis. Jupiter is a kind of prehistoric Eden, with primitive life-forms galore, and mineral resources free to exploit. Saturn is a kind of Heaven, and generates much mystical speculation, the journey ultimately having as much to do with theological allegory as with scientific prophecy or the theory of parallel Evolution.