I think this is basically right, Francis: but that's what intrigues me. So one response to Malthus was: we can depopopulate by shipping our indigent poor to Australia and Canada (and so we did), which were seen, erroneously of course, as essentially empty spaces --- a related Malthusian fear was that the racial other, eg the teeming Chinese, would invade and swamp us (plenty of "Yellow Peril" novels and stories in the later 19thC). But I'm intrigued that nobody speculated, fictively "wait, what happens in the fuure, when these empty spaces fill up? How did China get to be so populous anyway?" This is a roundabout way of challenging the current critical view that speculating about the future was something people began doing in the 19thC --- Alkon says: late 18thC with the French Revolution, Suvin says: early 19thC. There are novels *set in* the future from this early, certainly: Shelley's "Last Man" for instance. But Shelley's future is not substantively different to the 1820s, it has a very 1820s vibe. It may not be until Wells and the turn of the 20th that we have actual "anticipations" that factor-in systemic evolutionary change extrapolated into imaginary futurity.