Annals of the Twenty-Ninth Century: or, The Autobiography of the Tenth President of the World-Republic is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel written by Andrew Blair, and published anonymously in 1874

1874 in literature

The year 1874 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Arthur William à Beckett joins the staff of Punch.*Johan Nicolai Madvig loses his sight, forcing him to give up most of his research and writing....

.

Blair's work is one of a group of early science fiction novels that are now little known, but were influential in their own time — a group that includes Edward Maitland

Edward Maitland

Edward Maitland , English humanitarian writer, was born at Ipswich and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. The son of Charles David Maitland, perpetual curate of St James's Chapel, Brighton, he was intended for the Church, but his religious views did not permit him to take holy orders...

's By and By (1873), Percy Greg

Percy Greg

Percy Greg , son of William Rathbone Greg, was an English writer....

's Across the Zodiac

Across The Zodiac

Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record is a science fiction novel by Percy Greg, who has been credited as an originator of the Sword and planet sub-genre of science fiction.- Plot :...

(1880), and John Jacob Astor IV

John Jacob Astor IV

John Jacob Astor IV was an American businessman, real estate builder, investor, inventor, writer, lieutenant colonel in the Spanish-American War and a member of the prominent Astor family...

's A Journey in Other Worlds

A Journey in Other Worlds

A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future is a science fiction novel by John Jacob Astor IV, published in 1894.The book offers a fictional account of life in the year 2088...

(1894). Blair tells an extravagant tale of a future age in which the peoples of the Earth have been united in a Christian "Mundo-Lunar Republic," and other planets in the solar system have been reached and their native inhabitants encountered.

One modern critic has called Blair's book "a hodge-podge of interplanetary travel and super-scientific inventions" but also "a speculation of Stapledonian

Olaf Stapledon

William Olaf Stapledon was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.-Life:...

 magnitude." In the view of another, Blair portrays "the union of science and religion...under the sign of a positivist Deism

Deism

Deism in religious philosophy is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful creator. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the...

mixed up with various utopian socialisms, and progressing from one technological wonder to another."

A sample quote

The modern U.S. Navy trains dolphins; Blair foresees much more —

"...a levy of 40,000 naturalists were engaged for years in forming a hundred different zoological armies. Each of these was, by an admirable system of drill, brought to such a high state of discipline that a brigade, consisting of a thousand elephants, a thousand rhinoceroses, 180,000 monkeys and 15,000 other beasts of draught and burden could be officered with perfect ease by as few as one thousand naturalists. Birds of burden and fish of burden were in like manner drafted into the ranks of the zoological army, and, being subjected to similar training, were brought to a similar degree of efficiency."