The book concentrates most of its attention on the social and technological advances of the ninety-sixth century; and some of Macnie's forecasts and predictions are notably prescient.

The one most often cited in criticism and commentary[5][6][7] is Macnie's prediction that the paved roads of the future will have white lines running down their centers to divide the traffic flow.

[8] Macnie also forecasts advances in communication, with a global telephone network, and recorded lectures by college professors, among other developments that have come to pass in the ensuing centuries.

Yet women inventors have been primarily responsible for the development of varzeo and lizeo ("far-seeing" and "live-seeing")—that is, television and motion pictures.

The average work day is three hours long; people devote their abundant leisure time to the arts and sciences and to further education.

Macnie does envision a significant element of Puritanism in his future society, with Prohibition of alcohol and laws against marital infidelity.

He condemns the authors Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens as "maudlin sympathizers with crime...."[11] He even includes in his future the old Roman practice in which "the father had unquestioned power of life and death over his children.

(The narrator arrives in the 96th century able to speak its altered English language, in which the name of West Point has devolved into "Uespa," St. Louis into "Salu," and Buffalo into "Falo.")

[16][17] Once Looking Backward proved a great best-seller after its 1888 publication, Macnie and his publisher released a second edition of their 1883 book, re-titling it Looking Forward; or, The Diothas (1890).

This science-fiction novella was printed anonymously in New Zealand, and is extremely rare; it now exists only in a single copy in a library in Wellington.