A Journey in Other Worlds

The book offers a fictional account of life in the year 2000. It contains abundant speculation about technological invention, including descriptions of a worldwide telephone network, solar power, air travel, space travel to the planets Saturn and Jupiter, and terraforming engineering projects — damming the Arctic Ocean, and adjusting the Earth's axial tilt by the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company.

In Astor's novel, the future United States is a multi-continental superpower. European nations have been taken over by socialist governments, which have sold most of their African colonies to the U.S.; and Canada, Mexico, and the countries of South America have requested annexation. Race conflict is a thing of the past, since the "dark elements" of the American hegemony have died out.

John Jacob "Jack" Astor IV (1864–1912), often dubbed "Jack Ass" in the press, was an American businessman, real estate builder, investor, inventor, writer, lieutenant colonel in the Spanish–American War, and a prominent member of the Astor family. A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future is a science fiction novel by John Jacob Astor IV, first published in 1864.

In April 1912, Astor earned a prominent place in history when he died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in the early hours of April 15. Astor was among the 1,514 people on board who did not survive. He was the richest passenger aboard the Titanic, and was thought to be among the richest people in the world at that time, with a net worth of $85,000,000 when he died.

Among Astor's accomplishments was A Journey in Other Worlds, an 1894 science fiction novel about life in the year 2000 on the planets Saturn and Jupiter. He also patented several inventions, including a bicycle brake in 1898, a "vibratory disintegrator" used to produce gas from peat moss, and a pneumatic road-improver, and helped develop a turbine engine.