P. H. Colomb Archibald Forbes Charles Lowe F. N. Maude John Frederick Maurice David Christie Murray Frank Scudamore ~6 hr read

A black mass drops from a Russian balloon over Varna and explodes among crashing buildings, the opening of a detailed forecast of a coming European war, written by real admirals and generals.

This 1893 collaboration by Colomb, Maude, Forbes, and other military experts is a landmark work of future-war fiction. Vivid, authoritative, prophetic. Read it for a remarkable piece of speculative military history, a war of the near future imagined by the professionals themselves, richly illustrated and grimly plausible.

In its time

Published in 1893, during the 1890s, wells arrives.

Reading it

~6 hr read (a novel-length work, settle in).