Steam punk and science fiction

 Hi All,

One thing that I think we've lost in the science fiction realm is the old science fiction of the late 19th to mid 20th century and the scientific assumptions that people had at the time  .

 For example, there was a view that the further out from the sun you were the older any civilisation would be :  Venus blanketed in cloud would be  a young world of ocean and swamp, inhabited by monster like dinosaurs, the seas like soda pop , sizzling because of carbon dioxide. 

Mars by contrast was thought to be home to an ageing advanced civilisation , being much further from the sun, that has suffered from an environmental catastrophe (hence Lowell and his canals and indeed the Martians of HG Wells war of the worlds) .  

Then there is Edgar Rice Burroughs "barsoom" series featuring John Carter "gentleman of Virginia" who ends up on Mars and through swashbuckling adventure falls in love with a native Martian Princess, albeit a fifteen foot tall one as Burroughs incorporated lower Martian gravity into the stories.

While we have steam punk today, it makes you wonder what the world circa 1900 would have been like if we had actually got to Venus or Mars and they were inhabited or habitable?