The Future War genre has a long history; I. F. Clarke in Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars, 1763-3749 identifies The Reign of George VI, 1900-1925 from 1763 as the first example, but pinpoints George Chesney's The Battle of Dorking of 1871, a short story about a German invasion of Britain, as the point at which the genre really caught the public imagination, to the point that the Prime Minister warned against the dangers of alarmism as a direct result. Accounts of future wars appeared all across Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Chesney was prompted by the Franco-Prussian War, and as Clarke puts it "Each moment of international crisis - the French alliance with Russia in 1894, the Fashoda incident in 1898, the Tangier landing in 1905 - at once sets off an outburst of propaganda stories and warning visions of the future."

Imagined conflicts occurred between numerous combatants depending on the political mood of the time, usually involving at least two of Great Britain, France and Germany. William Le Queux's The Great War in England in 1897 sees France and Russia invading Britain, whom Germany comes to aid; in Gustav Erdmann's Wehrlos zur See Russia, France and Italy attack Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey; in The Battle of Port Said Britain and Germany side with Egypt against France, Russia and Turkey.

The "Invasion" genre was so popular that a young P. G. Wodehouse spoofed it in The Swoop! or, How Clarence Saved England: A Tale of the Great Invasion: "England was not merely beneath the heel of the invader. It was beneath the heels of nine invaders. There was barely standing-room."

Despite the profusion of such stories, though, in Clarke's words: "Save for rare exception, they are distinguished by a complete failure to foresee the form a modern war would take." As with much speculative fiction they say more of the time they were written, usually focusing on brief battles and heroic deeds rather than grinding industrial warfare.