Untergänge der Versuchsstation. Konservative Zukunftsromane der ‚Frühen Moderne‘
Downfalls of the Experimental Station. Conservative Future Novels of ‘Early Modernism’

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the genesis of the Austrian future novel (Zukunftsroman) around 1900 on the basis of three narrative texts. Contrary to typological or other pre structuring approaches, the different possibilities of extrapolating the contemporary state of know ledge are shown in individual text analyses. Although all three texts, whose authors (Vinzenz Chiavacci, Otto von Leixner, Sigmund Wilheim) are politically assigned to the conservative spectrum, can (also) be read as doomsday scenarios, the projected futures differ from (forced) acceptance to dystopian world destruction, thus laying the foundation for the genre dynamic processes of this genre in the period after 1918.

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