future war n.

Mr. Pratt is a keen student of military affairs. He does not leave reason behind and jump into fantasy, but looking calmly at present trends in warfare he gives us this realistic story of a future war.

The earliest account of a future war appeared in The Reign of George VI, 1900-1925, an anonymous story of 1763.

Perhaps his best-known work to fantasy collectors was The Conquest of America, a future-war story published by George H. Doran Co. in 1916.

The genre might be called the prophetic (or cautionary) novel of future war (and the first representative of the genre might be the work already cited, the 1763 Reign of George VI ). Its distinguishing characteristic is a richly detailed description of an imminent war, often fought with future weapons or tactics, which goes badly for the nation attacked.

Lost race stories…future war stories…dime novel invention stories…tales of advanced science-beyond-science… As soon as science fiction began to exist, it did so in a multitude of forms.

There were other SF formulas such as future war and lost-race—lost-world stories, there were tremendously influential individual writers such as Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and there were other publishing outlets.

Other late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century novelists utilized thinly disguised Edison-surrogates in a range of future war books.

H. Bruce Franklin argues (in War Stars, 1988) that the future war novels of 1880-1917 brought about the climate that led to the military/industrial establishment. SF got people worrying, thinking about future war stuff, and finally trying to anticipate it.