future-war-fiction

The chapter traces Robert Fulton's naval innovations, including his submarine torpedoes and the steam-powered warship Demologos, which he envisioned as defensive superweapons capable of securing perpetual peace. However, these inventions paradoxically laid the groundwork for modern offensive warfare, illustrating the unintended consequences of technological progress within industrial capitalism. The chapter further explores how American future-war fiction from 1880 to 1917 reflected and shaped an apocalyptic ideology intertwined with technological optimism, imperialist ambitions, and racialized violence, revealing early ideological roots of total war and the nuclear arms race.

The chapter examines late 19th and early 20th-century American future-war fiction that reflects anxieties about foreign threats, particularly from Great Britain, and the nation's imperial ambitions. It highlights how these narratives depicted Britain as a hostile naval rival and dramatized imagined attacks on American cities, such as the fictional bombardment of New York, while emphasizing technological innovations like self-destroying torpedo boats that symbolize American military superiority. These cultural productions reveal the ideological tensions between republican anti-imperialism and emerging militarism, and envision a geopolitical shift toward U.S. global dominance.