Fiction · 1894
A Journey in Other Worlds
A Romance of the Future
A group of scientists and adventurers travels by advanced spacecraft to Jupiter and Saturn in the year 2000, encountering alien landscapes, prehistoric creatures thought long extinct on Earth, and the outer limits of what contemporary science imagined the solar system might hold.
John Jacob Astor IV published A Journey in Other Worlds in 1894, his only novel, filling its speculative future with the era's own optimism about invention and scientific progress.
This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete text.
Contents
- Preface
- Book I — A Journey in Other Worlds. —
- Chapter I — Jupiter
- Chapter II — Antecedental
- Chapter III — President Bearwarden’s Speech
- Chapter IV — Prof. Cortlandt’s Historical Sketch of the World
- Chapter V — Dr. Cortlandt’s History Continued
- Chapter VI — Far-Reaching Plans
- Chapter VII — Hard at Work
- Chapter VIII — Good-Bye
- Book II
- Chapter I — The Last of the Earth
- Chapter II — Space and Mars
- Chapter III — Heavenly Bodies
- Chapter IV — Preparing to Alight
- Chapter V — Exploration and Excitement
- Chapter VI — Mastodon and Will-O’-the Wisps
- Chapter VII — An Unseen Hunter
- Chapter VIII — Sportsmen’s Reveries
- Chapter IX — The Honey of Death
- Chapter X — Changing Landscapes
- Chapter XI — A Jovian Niagara
- Chapter XII — Hills and Valleys
- Chapter XIII — North-Polar Discoveries
- Chapter XIV — The Scene Shifts
- Book III
- Chapter I — Saturn
- Chapter II — The Spirit’s First Visit
- Chapter III — Doubts and Philosophy
- Chapter IV — A Providential Intervention
- Chapter V — Ayrault’s Vision
- Chapter VI — A Great Void and a Great Longing
- Chapter VII — The Spirit’s Second Visit
- Chapter VIII — Cassandra and Cosmology
- Chapter IX — Doctor Cortlandt Sees His Grave
- Chapter X — Ayrault
- Chapter XI — Dreamland to Shadowland
- Chapter XII — Sheol
- Chapter XIII — The Priest’s Sermon
- Chapter XIV — Hic Ille Jacet
- Chapter XV — Mother Earth
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1864–1912 · Victorian
John Jacob Astor IV (1864–1912) was born in Rhinebeck, New York, into one of America's wealthiest families, and built on the family fortune as a real estate developer, hotelier, and inventor, holding patents for a bicycle brake and a turbine engine among other devices. His one venture into fiction, A Journey in Other Worlds (1894), imagines a twentieth-century expedition to Jupiter and Saturn packed with speculative technology, reflecting his own enthusiasm for scientific invention. He served as a colonel in the Spanish-American War and died at forty-seven when the RMS Titanic sank, reportedly last seen helping women and children into lifeboats before going down with the ship.
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