I love it when Science Fiction manages to predict the future. The seashells in your ears from Bradbury’s  Fahrenheit 451.  Assimov’s Robotic laws forming the basis to real life robot training. Religious Zealots taking over the country like in The Handmaidens Tale…okay I don’t like that one so much.

Anyways, the Victorians had some interesting ideas about what the future would bring that make it easier to add flavor to a Steampunk world.  Here’s some of the ones that came true

I know it’s not technically a roomba, but it does the same thing.  It’s very telling that even with a machine to do the work, the Victorians still assumed we’d have household servants.

In my filthy, little mind, this is a sex hotline. She’s about to show some ankle and the operator is just like, “oh, not this foot fantasy again…”

I want benches on the moving sidewalks in airports.  I mean, I also want a suave mustache and a fancy half-cape, but  this is such an improvement on the modern design!

Their are few things more modern than going out for drinks with a friend and then ignoring that friend to look at pictures of babies and male models. I also love that the woman is red is smoking a blunt and there’s some kind of weird space car in the background.  The predicted cars and legalization, folks!

The only thing unrealistic about a machine that combines stationary bicycling and virtual reality goggles is that the owner is actually using it for exercise and not as a clothes rack.

The Fantasist is a quarterly online magazine that publishes three original Fantasy novellas on the third Thursday of every third month.

And this month, while they celebrate Steampunk, one of them is mine!