John Jacob Astor

Born in Rhinebeck, New York, in 1864, John Jacob Astor IV came from one of America’s richest families, but he was more than a society name. He was a businessman, investor, inventor, and builder whose projects included major New York hotels, and he also served in the Spanish-American War.

For readers, his most interesting legacy is A Journey in Other Worlds (1894), an early science-fiction novel set in the distant future of 2000. The book imagines space travel and life on other planets, showing how strongly late-19th-century writers were drawn to science, progress, and bold speculation.

Astor died in 1912 in the sinking of the Titanic, a tragedy that has often overshadowed his writing. Even so, his novel remains a striking example of early American speculative fiction and offers a glimpse of how one Gilded Age author pictured the future.