Vintage Science Fiction from Australian Newspapers

Vintage Science Fiction from Australian Newspapers 1832-1900, 1940-1955 (Australian)

Item Set

Items

• Yackandandah in the Year 2000 A. D.
  This is a long-winded dialogue much like Australia Advanced with much description that fills the pages with nothing. Still it’s SF to a degree. Yackandandah is a tiny town in northeast Victoria. Could be interesting to check if the things predicted in 1898 came true in 2000.
• Through the Vanished South Pole
  Gravity reversers airships and monsters 32 chapters. Paratext describes him as a Sydney gentleman patents indicate he stayed in Paddington for awhile.
• The Threatened Bombardment
  Russian war fleet attack on Melbourne (satirical and political)
• The Social Code
  The story opens with there already being a linked observatory at Mt Kosciuszko and on Mars. The astronomy falls in love with a Martian woman he sees at Mars observatory 10 yet it will always be unrequited. Allegory to relations between Christians and Muslims as a Martian man is angry when the Martian woman takes off her veil to the astronomer and she is later vaporised for her crime.
• The Invasion of Maryborough (Written in the 20th Century.)
  A future war between England and Russia
• The Gold Magnet
  A man finds his wife’s hair's static is attracted to gold uses a lock of it to detect large deposits of gold. Not much science besides the mention of static electricity so more fantasy. But it could be argued it is.
• The Fall of Albany
  Japan and France declare war invade Albany. Australia fights back. The enemies try Freemantle but are defeated by electric ships that can travel at 30 knots. Not something electric ships could do until 2021
• The Electric Spark
  Chapter 1 of The Novels of the Future. The first story features lovers enhancing their kiss with electricity.
• The Decline and Fall of the Australian Empire. A Chapter of Future History.
  China takes over NSW and Victoria
• The Attack Upon Sydney. A Page from the History of the Future
  French attack Sydney. Electricians and electric lights discussed. Noiseless torpedo boat engines boats and other vehicles with electric lights and a huge and fast British ship rechristened City of Sydney. A fiction story advising Sydney to get her military more men and equipment and defensive positions.
• The Aerial Wedding An Australian Romance
  Includes details of the structure of the 4-seat aeroplane invention complete with foldable balloon and flapping wings. A humorous story written around the idea that the father wanted his daughter to wed someone high.
• Prospective History A Chapter Taken from the Future History of Victoria Time April 1868
  Political satire featuring sudden increase in native industries. A massive fence built along the coast and various social development predictions under a future dictator.
• Neuroomia: A New Continent
  Utopia at the South Pole and also refers to their contact with Mars life.
• My Grandfather's Narrative of The Siege of Sydney
  Short story set in 1911. A volunteer talks about his experience in the 1861 siege. A propaganda story ending with a message encouraging volunteering.
• Mr. Spence's account of the Russian Invasion. A.D. 1898. The Battle of Eagle Farm
  Future War set in 1898. Mr Spence's account of the Russian Invasion. Queensland was involved in the frontier wars so this could be a recruitment story.
• Marvellous Melbourne Twenty Years Hence (a story from 1909)
  Includes a plague in 1899, Geelong becoming the capital of Victoria a fire and lots of ideas. Short overview with no characters
• Forty Bob, Or -
  Mendax is forced to pay 40 bob for not voting and in revenge invents a device that turns off the entire telephone exchange in Australia. Likely the last Mendax story.
• Feminter or the Aurora Land of the South
  Adventurers meet a group of women from an advanced civilization and are taken into the bowels of the Earth. Similar to Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. 21 chapters.
• Economical Love
  A mechanical girl is sold to a drover for 1000 pounds. She can sing but needs winding up every 24 hours. She tells the buyer that she can only love him. The merchant promises she will stay the same for at least 20 years but doesn't like heat. Someone who doesn't know she is an automaton falls in love with her and steals her but she stops moving the next day and he thinks she's dead. In an afterword the author summarises what happens next and advises the story cannot continue as a result.
• Chess A Fool's Mate
  An inventor creates an automated chess set discussing the shortcut in mathematics and predicted moves he took. Interesting that it is similar to a decision made by a chess software engine maker in 2020 called alpha-beta pruning a node-decrease technique developed in the 1950s. This story is next to chess challenges in the newspaper.
• Australia's Peril: A Tale of how NSW might fair during a great war
  Purposive future war suggesting ways for Australia to defend itself. Australia loses to the Germans but England defeats the combined might of Europe. 30 chapters. However, written by a journalist working for the military. Hmm.
• Australia Advanced or Dialogues for the Year 2032
  Dialogues set in the future but are only a slight extrapolation of the 1832 present
• A World Divided: A Tale of Two Hemispheres. By An Observer in Mars, A. D. 2000
  The World splits in two through London and Melbourne and is destroyed. Political satire with SF ideas. 11 chapters
• A Socialist Dilemma. Being a Fragmentary Chapter from the Future.
  Utopia reply from Australia to Bellamy showing ingratitude as people always want more. Inventions included a machine that can stretch or shrink everyone's height so that everyone is equal. Satirical.
• A New Eden
  Published as a book in 1896. Set in 2096 a future utopia in Australia yet the world is a dystopia and no one ever lands until this story and then two are executed as a result.
• A Mechanical Minister
  A church minister that is cranked from the back overcranked then goes crazy. Satire similar to the mechanical salesman. Mentions New York.
• A Fin-de-Siecle Invention
  Inventor creates a device that reads the criminal's mind for any crimes and displays the result on a meter.
• A Dark Deed
  Chapter 2 of The Novels of the Future. The second story a wife adds a lightning tablet containing electricity fluid to her husband's coffee then kills him with a battery