Industrial Wonders and Pitfalls in Agostino della Sala Spada's 'Nel 2073!' and Émile Souvestre's 'Le monde tel qu'il sera en l'an 3000'

How positive or negative did the distant future appear to creative writers in Italy and France around the time of the Industrial Revolution? As a counterpoint to quantitative extrapolations in reports by the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this chapter advances a qualitative perspective within cultural geography and affective history regarding epoch-making developments five generations ago. I am concerned with two pieces of anticipatory fiction from the mid-1800s that have never been analysed together despite a number of commonalities: Agostino della Sala Spada’s enthusiastic view looking ahead two centuries from 1874, and Émile Souvestre’s cynical perspective extending more than a thousand years from 1846. Six topics guide my close readings of paired extracts from the exploits of Saturnino Saturnini, Maurice, and Marthe: aerial colonization, copy culture, domestic automation, industrial infrastructures, dietary homogenization, and mass machining. In examining similarities and contrasts between depictions surfacing from Italy in its early years as a nation-state and France towards the end of a monarchical order, I remain mindful of the thorny question of societies being shaped by free-market ideologies and trickle-down economics that have been touted as compatible with a sustainable future for our planet.