Abstract
As in other of his adventure novels of scientific anticipation (Voyage to the Bottom of the Earth, 20,000 Miles under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, etcetera) Verne gets ahead of his time and offers a futuristic vision of the United States of America in the year of 2889 in this short novel that appeared in the periodical El Siglo XIX. This way, we encounter gigantic buildings with projectors that draw immense advertisements on the clouds; trains which slide on top of pneumatic tubes at vertiginous speeds; storage cells that give off heat, electricity or mechanic power through solar energy; telephones which receive and transmit news, like our current cellular phones do music that reaches listeners through beautiful harmonies obtained by means of complicated algebraic formulas, and many other marvelous inventions conceived by the mind of a writer who was the predecessor of the science fiction genre.