Robert W Cole, Oxford-educated as a lawyer, gave that up (and maybe his studies) to do photography instead. In his late 20s he figured, hey, why not write a future-history epic. So he wrote an outline and... failed to get any publisher interest.
The year was 1900 and Cole found a vanity-press to release his Struggle for Empire. I stumbled upon it from Nyrath's twitter [UPDATE 12/7 maybe from Forgotten Futures 12...?], downloaded the PDF at an aeroport (being bored) and read it on the 'plane. It's... well, it's a quick read. I've dealt with what Cole should have known at the time.
Brett Holman did a review in 2009, from a library copy; in 14 July 2014, some mad lad scanned it for Google. So now we have more reviews.
As noted I really don't see it as a full book, as such; but as an outline, with a few descriptive passages filled out. There exist characters. These characters are paper. I have a sneaking suspicion that Heinlein did not read this book... and that Verhoeven did.
Cole gets major points for intuiting that faster-than-light travel would require monkeying with the force of gravity. Monkeying with gravity near the orbit of Jupiter turns out to be a Bad Idea. It follows that nobody cares about orbital-mechanics anymore. It might explain also how Earth's rotation got shifted such that London is now subtropical - physically if not socially (I'll get to this).
On topic, sorta, Cole intuits that mass will still need energy to push from point-to-point. This might explain the economics of getting London into an ecliptic-ready latitude. Also, our author floats unobtainia in materials, many of which were obtained if only to fly aircraft (aluminium, titanium...).
For biology, Cole knows that human-scale life in our solar-system only exists on this blue marble. There may or may not be life on other planets or moons; such life stands in the way of Cole's plot, which needs battles across our outer planets from 30 AU on in; so Cole dismisses all the life in these planets as "harmless". If you, fanfic author, want your squids in Europa or your archaea on Mars - Cole will allow it.
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