Voices Prophesying War

Clarke, I. F. Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763-3749. 1966. Second Edition. Oxford, UK, and New York City: Oxford UP, 1992.

See for discussions of such future-war (and related relevant topics) in such works as

Jules Verne's Clipper of the Clouds (a k a Robur the Conqueror) and Les cinq cents millions de la Bégum . . .

H. O. Foster's "In a Conning Tower"
Sir George Tomkyns Chesney's "The Battle of Dorking"

Robert Routledge's non-fiction Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

H. G. Well's works, particularly The War of the Worlds
Albert Robida's La guerre au vingtième siècle (War in the 20th Century)
Arthur Conan Doyle's "Danger!" 

"Andrew Marvell's" (pseudonym) Three Men Make a World and other Arcadian works where industrial civilization is destroyed to leave a more proper home for the remnant of human survivors.

Pieter Harting's Anno Domini 2071

Samuel Butler's Erewhon and "Darwin Among the Machines"

Yevgeny Zamiatin's We
Harold Nicholson's Public Faces
Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence

The center of the volume, between pages 146 and 147 has sixteen pages of plates showing images discussed in the text. Notable:

"The first balloons prompted visions of air warfare the 1780s." — Showing aerial cannonade by two balloons over infantry and some cavalry of the period, shooting what looks long-leashed attack-birds from the "Air-machines" («Luftmasehin»? — also given in French).
"A floating fortress said to be waiting in Boulogne for Napoleon's invasion of the United Kingdom," labelled (omitting scare CAPITALS), "An Accurate Representation of the Floating Machine Invented by the French for Invading England."

"The 'British Tar' of the Future" — Punch cartoon taking "an amused look at the new ironclads in the 1860s," showing men in Medieval-style armor with a hint of what was to be robots, in front of a large naval gun of the period — with "British Tar" hats, in metal. (See for theme of "fighting suits," as in Starship Troopers and The Forever War.

From Scientific American, "A Submarine Torpedo Boat, figure 1, "The Torpedo Leaving the Vessel"; Clarke labels the image "By the 1880s technological warfare attracted great interest." 

Images of 20th-c. warfare labelled by Clarke, "The possibilities of new weapons were a source of innocent merriment for gifted artists," showing images from La Caricature by Albert Robida, making "a comedy out of technological warfare ... to the point of anticipating an attach by les blockkhaus roulants on a position held by the Women's Territorial Army." (Students and fans of underground comics might see a foreshadowing of Robert Crumb here, and one or two early MAD Magazine artists.)

Image of a Martian tripod fighting machine from Wells's The War of the Worlds. "Opposite: from the beginning of the 20th century, anticipations of future warfare became a feature of the illustrated magazines," with a plate from Black and White Budget from 24 Feb. 1900, showing balloon warfare and infantry with bat wings, firing down on targets and receiving return fire. 

"The London Magazine in 1900 gave its readers a forecast of possible submarine warfare, with an image of what would later be called a wolf pack of four submarines firing torpedos at a merchant ship; except for having the subs too close together and too numerous against one small merchantman, this could be a realistic newspaper image from submarine warfare in World War I. 

"Rocket-powered fighting planes in their pens waiting for the order to attack," looking like a gigantic pigeon-coop or the warhead-ends of sexually-suggestive Katyusha rockets in a wall of caves as launcher. 

"Victory and world power go to the robots in [Karel] Čapek's R.U.R., with the robots pictured looking more like Robbie the Robot[1] than the more android-looking robot/workers in Čapek's play.

"By the `960s the US Army had begun to experiment with jet-packs for infantry reconnaissance units," shown in a realistic drawing.

++++++++++++++++++ Final section before the Index gives a "Checklist of Imaginary Wars, 1763-1990."

RDE, Initial Compiler; finishing 14May20, 16Dec20, 21Oct23