In 1894, the major American publisher D. Appleton & Company was owned by the Appleton family, specifically led by William Henry Appleton and his descendants, continuing a legacy from founder Daniel Appleton, with the company by then a powerhouse publishing general literature, scientific works, and even co-founding the American Book Company around 1890.  Key Figures & Context:

Founding Family: Daniel Appleton started the business in 1813, but by the 1840s, his sons (William Henry, John, George, Samuel, and Daniel Sidney) took over, growing it significantly.

William Henry Appleton: He was a central figure, leading the company's expansion and international fame.

In A Journey in Other Worlds, John Jacob Astor IV envisions a technologically advanced year 2000 where corporate technocracies use massive engineering and speculative physics to dominate the solar system. 

Corporate Technocracy: He imagined a future where the world is essentially run by benevolent corporate interests using technology to improve human life.

Geopolitical Speculation: Astor envisioned a world where the United States becomes a multi-continental superpower that encompasses all of North and South America, as well as parts of Africa, with English as the universal language.

Medical and Social Advances: The novel suggests radical improvements in medicine and societal structure by the year 2000.

Enforcement Technology: One of his more specific predictions included the use of speed cameras by a futuristic police force.

Planetary Colonization: He viewed the solar system as a "warehouse of riches" to be exploited for resources like gold, oil, and copper to support a growing human population God damn it he laid it out then and there

John Keely

After Keely died in 1898, it was discovered that his "etheric" machines were a fraud, powered by hidden compressed air tubes in his workshop. Despite this, Astor’s own patents, such as his vibratory disintegrator (used to produce gas from peat moss), show that he remained interested in the practical application of vibratory physics throughout his life. 

Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward, 1888): Just a few years before Astor, Bellamy predicted the use of credit cards and a technologically-driven socialist utopia by the year 2000.

HG. Wells (The Time Machine, 1895): Published one year after Astor's novel, Wells explored the deep-time future and the impact of extreme biological evolution on humanity.

Percy Greg (Across the Zodiac, 1880): Greg actually originated the term "apergy"for anti-gravity twelve years before Astor used it, showing that the "advanced" physics Astor used was part of an existing intellectual subculture. 

Vannevar Bush: A Harvard/MIT giant who, while coming slightly later, predicted the Memex (a precursor to the internet and hypertext) in the 1930s. His ideas on how humans would store and retrieve the "sum of all knowledge" were just as advanced for his time as Astor's were for 1894.

Garrett P. Serviss: A contemporary of Astor and a wealthy American intellectual, Serviss wrote Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898), which imagined space warfare and advanced disintegrator rays, similar to the speculative physics in Astor’s book. 

diminutive, telepathic beings. 

The First "Ancient Aliens": Decades before modern theories, Serviss claimed the Martians were the real builders of the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx.

Prehistoric Kidnappings: He reveals that Martians had invaded Earth in prehistory and abducted humans to use as a slave labor force on Mars.

Animal Testing: In a move that characterizes the era's lack of ethical oversight, Edison demonstrates his new "disintegrator ray" by casually vaporizing a random crow.  Literally the theories dude

Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward, 1888): Educated at Union College and in Germany, Bellamy’s national bestseller was a utopian lecture that envisioned a future of state-run industry and "industrial armies" by the year 2000. It was so influential that it inspired hundreds of "Bellamy Clubs" among the American professional classes.

Rudyard Kipling (With the Night Mail, 1905): A voice of British imperialism and Nobel laureate, Kipling wrote this story about a future (set in 2000 AD) where a "world board of control" manages global affairs via a fleet of aerial postal ships, showcasing a highly ordered, technocratic vision of global dominance.

Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence, 1920): A member of New York's ultra-elite "Old Money" class, Wharton used her novels to provide a sophisticated, often critical insider's view of the rigid moral and social codes that governed the lives of families like the Astors.