I ran across a story called “The Abduction of Alexandra Seine” by Fred C. Smale. It’s stuffed full of wild ideas like a time viewer used to see who committed crimes, flying cars that travel from Japan to London in 16 hours, and of course food pills. Did I mention that it’s from 1900? It was so far ahead that until very recently readers wouldn’t realize that one of the devices is essentially a real-time Google Earth, sending images of one-square-mile areas to a viewer for searching.
Even better, it’s a spoof. Yes, people were writing spoofs of science fiction in 1900. Smale took the breathless derring-do of the stalwart hero rescuing his fair maiden from the evil villain - he of the secret castle in the Balkens - a secret castle! - and put them into aerocars.
It’s also one of the most obscure, unrecognized proto-science fiction stories. Only a couple of English anthologies ever reprinted it and its text couldn’t be found online.
It is now… The Abduction of Alexandra Seine has the full text and also scans of the original, profusely illustrated, as they used to say, by R. W. Wallace.
I’m making no claims that this is the Great Lost Story. You can never be sure which idiocies are part of the spoof and which are due to this being Smale’s first published story. It is, though, a lot more fun than most of the turgid stuff dragged up from the era. And the ideas just keep flowing.