Jules Lermina (1895) La Bataille de Strasbourg [The Battle of Strasbourg] An early novel on the theme of the “yellow peril”. Set in the 1920s, though written in the 1890s, Jules Lermina’s The Battle of Strasbourg is credited by historians of futuristic fiction with launching the literary genre known as …
Louis Gastine (1912) Les Torpilleurs de l’air: Prodigieux exploits d’un aviateur français, Paris, La Maison du Livre Moderne. Translated into English (1913) as War in Space: Or, an Air-Craft War Between France and Germany , London, The Walter Scott Publishing Co. A future war tale of aerial warfare between Germany …
Maurice Loir (1895) Naval Battles of the Future Maurice Loir’s (1895) Naval Battles of the Future takes the form of a series of journal entries by a perceptive and philosophical naval officer aboard a French vessel engaged in dreadnought warfare in the Mediterranean. It is a sobering reflection on patriotism, …
Barillet-Lagargousse (1885) La guerre finale, histoire fantastique par Barillet-Lagargousse, ingénieur destructeur, membre de plusieurs sociétés philanthropiques et savantes. Barillet-Lagargousse’s The Final War (1885), takes the European arms race of the late 19th century to its logical end: a terrifying deadlock due to the political and social paralysis caused by weapons …
Eugene Demolder (1901) L’Agonie d’Albion Tells the story of the defeat and fall of the British Empire.
Capitaine Danrit [E.A. Driant] (1901) La guerre fatale: France-Angleterre In 1888 Driant began writing his first guerre imaginaire (“imaginary war”) novel, which he was to publish using the pseudonym “Capitaine Danrit”. This was La Guerre de demain (“The War of Tomorrow”), comprising three stories which told the tale of: La …
Danrit, E. (1889) La Guerre en Ballon The third book in Danrit’s trilogy La Guerre de demain. Full text (in French) at: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b598073;view=thumb;seq=1
Pierre Giffard (1908) La Guerre Infernale – illustrated by Albert Robida. La Guerre Infernale was an adventure novel for children, published as a serial, an edition appearing every Saturday. The 520 illustrations were created by Albert Robida. It described the second world war, years before it happened, describing an attack …
Albert Robida (1883) La Guerre au Vingtième Siècle A fantastical view of warfare in the 20C from the French illustrator Robida involving aircraft, tanks, chemical and biological weapons. Robida is said to have shown a penchant for satire even in his youth; by 1873, he had founded his own satirical …
Jules Verne (1904) Master of the World [Maître du monde]. A sequel to Robur the Conqueror. As a fantastical novel rather than a prediction of future war it, like Robur the Conqueror, is somewhat out of scope of this site but is included for completeness and comparison. Summary [Wikipedia]: A …
Jules Verne (1886) Robur the Conqueror [Robur-le-Conquérant] [aka. The Clipper of the Clouds] Although somewhat outside the scope of Invasion / Future War Literature the subject matter is highly relevant as a science-fiction writer’s view on future warfare technology. It was followed by a sequel Master of the World (Maître …