Thursday, 7 January 2016

A Few Miscellaneous Points

(i) I did not mention in the previous post, although it was probably obvious, that I had cited:

Heinlein's single Future History;
Asimov's single future history;
Blish's main future history;
Anderson's first future history.

Thus, in his first of several future histories, Anderson addresses two Heinleinian themes and two Asimovian themes. However, immortality, generation ships and robots are treated in only one short story each whereas psychotechnics/psychodynamics, similar to Asimov's psychohistory, gives its name to the Psychotechnic History. Also, Asimov merely states that psychohistory is mathematical whereas Anderson more convincingly shows how psychotechnics emerges from psychology, games theory etc.

(ii) How far future histories have come is discussed here.

(iii) I have referred to a Solar Union government but it is evident from "Cold Victory" that the Union is an alliance between Terrestrial, Martian and Venerian governments.

(iv) "Brake":

introduces the Fireball Space Line, which was referenced in "Holmgang";
advances a plot line introduced in The Snows Of Ganymede - terraforming machines are now being sent not only to Ganymede and Callisto but also to Europa;
features a Planetary Engineer who is also a Rostomily clone - thus, Rostomily appears in the opening story, his clones in two later stories;
informs us that social chaos has intensified on Earth;
closes the Solar Union period of the Psychotechnic History.

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