In 1886 Sir Julius Vogel, an early Prime Minister of New Zealand, published this book of his vision of a utopian British Empire in the year 2000. It is considered by some to be the first New Zealand Science Fiction novel, and is the the reason why the New Zealand Science Fiction awards are issued in Vogel's name.
The book is very short by modern standards, but even then only about one third of the text is directly related to the story proper, which concerns the adventures of a young New Zealand woman as she navigates the vicissitudes of high office and affairs of the heart. The rest of the book is given over to long discourses explaining the nature of the world of 2000 AD, how that world came about, and what the features of life in that world are like. For example, Vogel devotes an entire chapter to his notion of "Air Cruisers", by which the people of the world move about. These narrative sections are written more like a person looking back on history, rather than someone trying to anticipate the future. Indeed, at one point the narrator even describes itself as an historian.
The story itself is only marginally interesting, but I found the essay-like sections endlessly fascinating. For example, the utopian nature of life in 2000 AD was deliberately brought about by... the banks. Yes, the banks! In Vogel's 1915 a pan-European war was imminent. The banks stopped it from happening by threatening to move all their capital to America if war broke out. Then in 1920 the banks had a big meeting, and decided that, while being rich was all well and good, it wasn't fair for so many people to live such wretched lives. Feeling that rectifying this was too important a job to be left to governments, they fixed the problems themselves by introducing a single currency and a universal social welfare system.
In Vogel's 2000 women have near-full equality with men. It is considered that "the bodily power is greater in man, and the mental power larger in woman. [...] Woman has become the guiding, man the executive, force of the world." This means that, for example, the Prime Ministers of Australia and England, as well as the President of the US, are women.
By far and away my favourite bit of the book was the chapter devoted to how Vogel foresaw air travel. As much detail as he supplies, he's still frustratingly unclear as to even the appearance of his "air cruisers". They are made of aluminum for lightness, and are propelled by "quickly revolving fans". The exact configuration of these fans is never mentioned, but I am sure that he had no notion of anything like a lifting surface (remember he was writing about 20 years before Wright Brothers/Richard Pearce), but I don't think he was even aware of the advantages of simple streamlining. So I'm pretty sure that his air cruisers need fans for both lift ("buoyancy" he calls it), and propulsion. But whether he saw the lifting fans as top-mounted or bottom-mounted, or the propulsion fans as push-props or pull-props, is entirely unclear.
He realized that multiple-redundancy would be needed for safety, and so each air cruiser has three mutually-redundant sets of fans, driven by redundant engines. He could see that neither electrical, steam, compressed-air, nor petroleum engines could ever be energetic or light enough to provide the needed power, so he envisaged the development of a safe binary fuel source. The two inert ingredients, when brought into contact, burned energetically enough to drive the fans, but not energetically enough to blow the air cruisers up. Since the products of decomposition of the reaction were lighter than air, he introduces a final safety feature: each air cruiser is surrounded by a deflated shroud. In the unlikely event that all three sets of fans fail, the crew simply inflate the shroud with the exhaust from the combustion engines, thus turning the air cruiser into a dirigible for an emergency landing. Amazing stuff.
Vogel had no notion at all of the need for conservation or of environmental concerns. At one stage in the book the Clutha river is completely emptied in order to gain access to the vast accumulations of gold in the river bed! Indeed, the author asserts that, "the earth itself is capable of an indefinite increase of the products which are necessary to man's use."
I was completely delighted with Stewart Island's thriving ivory industry. The ivory is harvested from the long-dead creatures frozen in Antarctica! I don't think Vogel had any notion of whether Antarctica even existed (even though quite a bit was known about it in his time), as his version of the Antarctic Island doesn't cover the South Pole, and is inhabited by "Antarctic Esquimaux".
Vogel's English is perfectly understandable to the modern audience, although the phrasing is sometimes strange and the dialogue seems awfully stilted and mannered to the modern ear. Even while alone the heroine says things like, "Will all the triumphs of the world and the sense of the good I do to others console me during the years to come for the sunshine of love to which every woman has a claim?" There are occasional linguistic head-scratching moments, for example it took me a while to figure out that the chapter entitled "Baffled Revenge" actually meant thwarted revenge.
For its age, this book is a truly remarkable achievement, and I feel very privileged to have read it.
Anno Domini 2000 is by Julius Vogel.
