The Twentieth Century

Robida, Albert (1848-1926). The Twentieth Century. French: 1882. Philippe Willems, translator, introduction. Arthur B. Evans, editor. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2004.

Contents:[1]

"A Note on the Translation and the Artwork"
Introduction
Text in three parts
Notes
Bibliography
Brief biography of Albert Robida
"About the Translator and Editor"

For some of the illustrations in this work, see Anthony Frewin’s One Hundred Years of Science Fiction Illustration (1974).

In a manuscript of a chapter entitled "4. Post-Vernean Victorian SF," John J. Pierce notes The Twentieth Century as a

novel of 400 pages devoted to everyday life in the future – neither a utopia nor a dystopia, but more along the lines of a situation comedy – in which technological and social change go hand in hand. Many of its forecasts – even those intended to be satirical – come uncomfortably close to reality. 

[...] Communications have been revolutionized by the telephonoscope, or télé for short – a remarkable forecast, considering that it came only six years after the invention of the telephone and two years before the invention of the scanning disk, the first element in what became the technology of television. Robida’s inspiration was surely that cartoon by Georges Du Maurier – who credited his imaginary telephonoscope[2] to [Thomas] Edison[3] rather than [Alexander Graham] Bell![4] But for Du Maurier, it was just a joke. Robida turned it into a vision.

It is the social impact of television that comes through in The Twentieth Century. L’Epoque, the leading Paris newspaper, is actually a television news service [...].  (section, "Picturing the Future")

In a touch Isaac Asimov[5] Robert Silverberg, and other 20-century SF authors would appreciate, "a mechanical president heads the French Republic" (ibid). In a couple touches Aldous Huxley might especially, like, John J. Pierce notes a bio-technology theme including where a/the major character "seeks government approval for mandatory inoculation of the population with a bacteriophage and rejuvenation treatment developed by his chief scientist Sulfatin – rumored to be a bottle baby — in the Brave-New-World sense of the term – although he seems closer to normal than his boss, despite being raised as a virtual thinking machine" (ibid.).

RDE, John J. Pierce, 19Ap20 f.