In the Year 2889
- Downloads
- Under 100
- First published
- 1889
- Pages
- 27
About this book
In the Year 2889 is a short piece of speculative fiction usually attributed to Jules Verne, though scholars have argued for years that the actual author was probably his son Michel Verne, working with notes and ideas from Jules and publishing under his father's much more famous name. The story first appeared in English in The Forum magazine in 1889, written for an American audience and projecting forward exactly one thousand years to imagine what life in the year 2889 might look like.
The narrative follows Mr. Fritz Napoleon Smith, the editor of the Earth Chronicle, the most powerful newspaper of the future, as he goes through a single working day. The technology Verne or his son imagines is striking. Video calls between continents. Atmospheric advertising projected onto clouds. Air travel as the standard mode of long distance transportation. Synthetic food. Solar power. The transmission of news through some kind of mass broadcast system rather than printed papers. The piece is sometimes credited as one of the earliest works of recognizable science fiction in the modern sense, projecting plausible technological extrapolations rather than fantastical premises.
The story is short, less than ten thousand words, and reads more as a thought experiment than as a fully developed narrative. The plot is thin. The pleasure is in the imaginative inventory of futures, some of which now look prescient and some of which look charmingly off. The atmospheric advertising is here. The video calls are here. The synthetic food is mostly not yet here, though humans have certainly not stopped trying.
For readers interested in early science fiction, in Jules Verne's wider catalogue, or in the question of what nineteenth century writers thought the distant future would look like, In the Year 2889 is a worthwhile short read. The piece works well alongside Verne's other speculative fiction like Paris in the Twentieth Century and his more famous adventure novels.
About the author
More from this genre
See all
Books like this one
Reviews and discussion
No ratings yet. Be the first reader to rate this book.
Rate this book
Pick a star, then sign in. Only readers who confirmed their email can rate.
No comments yet. Share a thought, a question or a favourite passage.
Copyright concern? Read our DMCA policy
Read or download
Public domain book This work is in the public domain and free of copyright. Anyone may read, download and share it.
- EPUB 19 KB
-
KINDLE Send to Kindle Send
- Download the EPUB file to this device.
- Open Amazon's Send to Kindle page, sign in, and add the file. Open Send to Kindle (opens in a new tab)
On a phone: open the downloaded EPUB and share it to the Kindle app.
You can also email the file to your Kindle address (it ends in @kindle.com) from an email address you approved in your Amazon account.
- PDF 141 KB
Downloads start right away. How to open EPUB on your phone
Book facts
- Author
- Jules Verne
- First published
- 1889
- Reading time
- About 25 minutes
- Pages
- 27
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Dystopian
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, Read online