Reading The King in Yellow and learning a bit about Robert W. Chambers encouraged me to go even a little further back in creepy fiction history, to Ambrose Bierce. I'm pretty sure I read his "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in high school, but not much else.
I dug around and found a collection of Bierce's works, and the first volume (of which there are 12!) started with a strange story called Ashes of the Beacon. It presents itself as "An historical monograph written in 4930," and it is a scathing satire of democracy and American politics, and just plain human nature.
It tells the story (mostly) of the decline of the American nation from 1920 through roughly 1995 (it was written in 1909 or earlier), and while it pokes a lot of fun at common political tropes, it also deliberately gets a lot of things wrong, which lends a bit of uncertainty to what message Bierce actually wanted to put forward.
He lampoons judges, women, insurance companies, protectionism, wealthy manufacturers, charity, and more. In fact, his denunciation of insurance companies is a sizeable chunk of the piece, and even with the errors, the "author" makes some poignant points.
All of this is done with a historian's tone, biting satirical wit, and enough weird futurist details to make it a very interesting read.
Check it out here:
https://archive.org/details/bwb_T3-CBR-458_1/page/n21/mode/2up
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