Published as a 50-page book, the story tells of the invention of the Prospective Telegraph and provides excerpts from a newspaper that it retrieves from a 1977 future dominated by scientific and medical super-nannies.
—Michael Main
By this truly wonderful invention (exquisitely simple in its machinery, yet of surpassing power) the obstacle of Time is as effectually conquered as that of Space has been for the last generation by the Electric Telegraph; and future years—even, it is anticipated, future centuries—will be made to respond to our call as promptly and completely as do now the uttermost parts of the earth wherewith the magic wire has placed us in communication.

Variants

(1)
  1. The Age of Science: A Newspaper of the Twentieth Century, as by Merlin Nostradamus (Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1877).
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Frances Power Cobbe as by Merlin Nostradamus