The Electric Life

Description

In 1893, French illustrator and satirist Albert Robida published a novel that predicted video conferencing, germ warfare, streaming entertainment, surveillance cameras, screen exhaustion, drone-like air taxis, pharmaceutical restaurants, and women leading in every profession. He missed flying cars. He got nearly everything else right.

The Electric Life is Robida’s masterpiece — the final volume of his visionary trilogy that began with The Twentieth Century (1883) and War in the Twentieth Century (1887). Set in a Paris of 1955 where the Eiffel Tower stands ‘ancient and somewhat rusty’ and a luxury hotel perches atop the Arc de Triomphe, the novel follows an inventor’s family through a world of pneumatic transport, téléphonoscope video calls, and chemist-soldiers parading bacteriological cannons with philanthropic rhetoric.

Where Jules Verne celebrated bold engineers, Robida satirised the humans left behind by progress. His comic method is devastating: change the technology, leave human nature untouched. Couples argue through phonograph recordings. Mothers monitor children via screen. A senator’s scholarly history of dangerous women turns out to feature his ex-wife’s face on every page. The technology is science fiction. The comedy is social realism. That combination is why the novel reads as startlingly contemporary — a retrofuturistic mirror held up to our own age of screen addiction, digital surveillance, and wellness-industry anxieties.

Often regarded as the first science fiction graphic novel, The Electric Life integrates over 100 of Robida’s original illustrations directly into the narrative — not as decoration but as editorial commentary, delivering jokes and satire that the prose alone cannot convey. From the pneumatic chaos of The Tubes to the withered figures in Physical Decay of the Overly Refined Races, these plates are essential to the reading experience.

This new and complete English translation by Time Warp Editions restores the unabridged 1893 French text with:

— Over 100 original illustrations, sharpened and brightened for modern print — A refined translation prioritising readability for English-speaking audiences — Extensive chapter endnotes contextualising Robida’s historical references and satirical targets — A new introduction, author biography, and full bibliography

For readers of classic French science fiction, steampunk, Victorian illustrated books, and retrofuturism — and for anyone who suspects the future was already laughing at us more than a century ago.

Time Warp Editions: preserving and refining classic literature for modern readers.