"Progress"

Looking Backward

Edward Bellamy’s 1888 novel, Looking Backward 2000–1887, describes a futuristic society in the year 2000 to which the main character, Julian West, travels from the year 1887. He does this via suspended animation, the major mode of time travel in in early science fiction writings. In the book, West awakes in an America transformed by a non-violent revolution that abolished private property in favor of state ownership, thus eliminating social classes and social ills such as war, poverty, crime, and labor strife.

Looking Backward was a commentary on late 19th century issues and in it Bellamy sought to imagine solutions to real problems. Following its publication, the book inspired numerous sequels and commentaries, as well as a real political movement through the establishment of Nationalist Clubs intended to realize Bellamy’s vision of the future. Among the book projects inspired by Looking Backward was a collaboration between journalist George Parson Lathrop and inventor Thomas Edison.

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Edison and Lathrop

The relationship between George Parsons Lathrop, the journalist/author and Edison, the inventor, began in 1885 when Lathrop interviewed Edison at his New York laboratory. He reconnected with Edison again in in late 1887 and early 1888 in connection with the promotion of the inventor’s new wax-cylinder phonograph. In June 1888 Lathrop was involved in the effort to create a company to fund an amusement phonograph and also proposed a biography of the inventor to be published by Samuel Clemens’s publishing company, Charles L. Webster and Co. Neither of these ventures reached fruition but Lathrop continued to propose articles on Edison, finally publishing a new interview with him in the February 1890 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.

Lathrop’s interest in collaborating with Edison on a novel of the future seems to have been inspired by earlier interviews with the inventor. At the conclusion of his 1885 article and interview, Lathrop described Edison as able to “manipulate as at will and without interruption the mysterious forces and properties of nature. In meeting him I thought of him more as a poet or a musician than as a machinist and electrician. . . .perfecting man’s control over the elements that shape life.”

When Lathrop interviewed Edison in 1890 he presented the inventor with some of his novels. In response Edison asked if Lathrop wanted “to see my novel?” Edison then showed him one of his notebooks full of rough sketches and notes. ““These ideas are occurring to me all the time. . . . I just jot them down here whenever they strike me, day or night, and keep them with the hope of getting the leisure to develop them.” Lathrop noted that this “curious little manuscript volume, in its particular way, answered precisely to the character and use of a story-writer’s note-book. He was right in calling it his ’novel’ for it was full of the keenest imagination.” This notebook likely inspired Lathrop to propose the following June that Edison provide him with similar kinds of notes for their novel.

Harper's Interview

Collaborating on Progress

Lathrop’s interest in collaborating with Edison on a novel of the future seems to have been inspired by earlier interviews with the inventor. At the conclusion of his 1885 article and interview, Lathrop described Edison as able to “manipulate as at will and without interruption the mysterious forces and properties of nature. In meeting him I thought of him more as a poet or a musician than as a machinist and electrician. . . .perfecting man’s control over the elements that shape life.”

The Story Emerges

Having “agreed with McClure to write the book by December 15th,” Lathrop found himself pleading with Edison's private secretary Alfred Tate to arrange a meeting with Edison. A series of letters between June and late August 1890 reveal Lathrop’s futile attempts to meet with Edison to work on the novel. By October, Edison’s frequent delays propelled Lathrop to express his frustration to Tate that the “collaborative story matter has been waiting, now, over three months since Mr. Edison gave it his sanction, & time passes.” This apparently prompted Edison to send Lathrop his first set of notes. After copying them Lathrop sent back the notes, which he called “immense,” and suggested that Edison provide him with “the phonograph cylinders, to which you dictate your further ideas for the novel.”

On November 22 Lathrop sent Edison “the first division of the novel (five chapters)” and returned Edison’s notes with annotations in red on sections for which he wanted “fuller details.” These may be the surviving undated notes found in Edison’s papers. Seeing substantial progress, McClure expected the story to be ready in January and in early December announcements began to appear about the story to be written by Lathrop and “filled with drawings made by Mr. Edison to illustrate his predictions”.

As the new year opened, Tate reported to Lathrop that Edison had “tried to dictate the notes to the phonograph, but failed. He has, however, about 56 pages of notes ready.” Lathrop even managed to meet with Edison to receive these notes However, Lathrops’s subsequent efforts to meet with Edison, including a visit with McClure, were stymied by the inventor’s busy schedule on more important inventive projects. Lathrop succeeded in writing new chapters, which he sent to Edison in mid-May, but the inventor failed to provide any feedback and, in late June, Lathrop had to beg Edison’s wife Mina to “gather together the chapters” and send them back.

Lathrop's Frustrations

By August 10th of 1891, Lathrop had ran out of patience and poured out his frustrations in a seventeen page letter to Edison. He detailed the history of their difficult collaboration and made it clear that he had been unable to complete the story due to his inability to meet with the inventor. He explained that he could not write an entire book on vague and simple ideas, and needed further explanation of Edison’s notes. Edison had only detailed “two or three” of his ideas, which was not enough for Lathrop to complete the novel. He wrote frankly about his frustrations with their collaboration.

“I will ask you to try to realize what it is to me to be forced to hang around like a dog waiting for a bone — and not even getting the bone. I have never been placed in such a position before; never would have allowed myself to be placed in it, this time, if I could have forseen what was coming and shall take exceedingly good care never to be led into a similar predicament again.”

The Collaboration Fails

Lathrop’s letter went unanswered, prompting him to write again on August 18: “I do not understand on what principle you can reconcile to so being one in the bunch, after promising your cooperation; nor why you should ignore my communications.” Perhaps prompted by this letter, Tate finally sent Lathrop’s earlier letter to Edison. Edison finally read Latrhop’s letter and at the end of August Tate sent Edison’s notes back to the writer telling him that Edison had been spending all his time at the ore milling works “in order to get things in proper shape.”

Lathrop continued in his efforts to arrange a meeting with Edison but the inventor’s other projects kept him away from the laboratory. Although Edison subsequently provided Lathrop with another thirty pages at the end of January 1892, Lathrop again failed in his efforts to meet with Edison to discuss the story. However, Lathrop did not give up and, at the end of 1896, he finally succeeded in publishing a version titled “In the Deep of Time.”

In the Deep of Time

After the collaboration on “Progress” for Sidney McClure’s syndicate failed, Lathrop did not abandon the project. At the end of 1896, Lathrop succeeded in having a version of the collaboration serialized by the newspaper and literary syndicate of Irving Bachellor as a four-part story titled “In the Deep of Time.” The title appears to borrow a phrase from Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present (1843), which uses England’s twelfth-century past to critique its industrial present and future. Lathrop’s story appeared in the Sunday edition of numerous American newspapers between 13 December 1896 and 3 January 1897. It also appeared (with new illustrations and slightly revised text) in the February and May 1897 issues of the English Illustrated Magazine. Lathrop retained other Edison notes that have not been located, two items from which he reproduced as illustrations in the American newspaper version of the story.

The technologies depicted in the story were mainly derived from the extant set of notes with Lathrop’s annotations found in Edison’s papers. However, facsimile reproductions of other notes reproduced in the serialization suggest that Lathrop also drew on notes by Edison that no longer exist. The introduction to the story makes clear that while he relied on Edison’s notes for “suggestions as to inventions and changed mechanical, industrial and social conditions in the future,” it was Lathrop who was solely responsible for the story.

“In the Deep of Time” chronicles the experiences of Gerald Bemis, who was chosen by a secret “Society of Futurity” to be “vivifcated” (put in suspended animation) for 300 years, an idea described in Edison’s notes.

After waking up in the 22nd century, Bemis experiences a drastically new world with unfamiliar people and futuristic technologies such as electric trains and carriages, mail carriers that fly through the air, and an “anti-gravitational machine or the interstellar express car.” The latter device enabled travel to Mars while an interplanetary telegraph system utilizing the large iron deposits found in the Penokee mountains enabled communication with the planet.

Other ideas incorporated from Edison’s notes include the use of vaccinations, food made from wood fibers, and even a Darwinian Society breeding apes to make them more intelligent. The story also includes technologies such as motion pictures and a variety of artificial materials used to replicate expensive items such leather, gold, and silk that Edison had actively worked to develop.

After exploring the future and its many new technologies, Bemis nonetheless was led to conclude: “With all the improvements in machinery, inventions and modes of life, human nature, also, has somewhat improved; but not radically altered. Its passions good and bad remain much the same, together with its weakness, fickleness and treachery.”

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