Future Perfect

Future Perfect is a collection of 21 short stories and selections from American authors of the nineteenth century. Each of these stories are classified as science fiction, although all are from a time before the phrase "science fiction" was introduced.

Franklin is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University. He has written a number of books on culture and history and edited other anthologies

Many of the authors are immediately recognizable: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, Washington Irving, Edward Bellamy and Mark Twain. While the other names are not as familiar, they deserving of their place in the ollection.

The stories are divided into sections by theme, "Automata", "Marvelous Inventions", "Medicine Men", "Into the Psyche", "Space Travel", "Women's Work" and "Time Travel". Each section and each story has a well-written and scholarly introduction. These essays help place the stories in the context of their culture. They also provide information about other stories and authors that you might want to research.

An intersting section for the Steampunk crowd is the collection of Automata stories. The word "android" originated in 1727. Mechanical men appeared frequently by the end of the nineteenth century. Some stories dealt with the problem of automata taking jobs away from humans.

A few of these stories make good sources for adventure ideas and all of them are good reading. If you want to build a Steampunk campaign or Victorian Scientific Romance campaign, these stories will help instill the proper atmosphere.

You can get it from Amazon.com at the link above, but there are copies much cheaper available from Amazon's Auctions or zShops. I got mine at Half Price bookstore, although a large section of the pages are upside down.