The Twentieth Century

Author: Albert Robida

Robida was an illustrator and caricaturist more than a novelist, which is just as well because it is the many charming illustrations for this book that have survived better than the story itself. But what illustrations! Writing in the last quarter of the 19th century, Robida imagined the middle years of the twentieth century as a place in which the familiar attitudes and mores of Victorian Paris are recreated against a setting of technological wonders. Along the way, for instance, we see people in 19th century costume travelling in high speed mass transit systems above the city, flying in helicopters, conversing on videophones and more. With reference to women's liberation, biological warfare and even a Chinese invasion going on in the background, it's a very different world. Yet against this he tells a conventional tale of a young man wanting to marry a woman his parents consider unsuitable. Why it's on the list: Ignore the story, just enjoy the pictures. They give a vivid impression of what the future might be like and actually proved surprisingly influential; films like Metropolis and Things to Come clearly owe a debt to Robida's illustrations.