Friday 11 March 2016

Ten Near Futures

When I reflected that several American future histories are interconnected, I knew that Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium series was part of the mix but did not expect to get into it in any detail but it is worth the effort. After reading about -

Robert Heinlein's World Federation,
Isaac Asimov's economy- and ecology-controlling positronic Brains,
James Blish's spaceflight-banning Bureaucratic State, Port Authority and two alternative UN governments (four scenarios here),
Poul Anderson's Solar Union and Solar Commonwealth (in his first two future histories),
Larry Niven's UN and Belt governments (in his single future history) -

- we now read about Pournelle's CoDominium of the United States and the Sovier Union.

Here are ten parallel near future regimes each preceding later historical developments. Try to fit all that into a single multiverse. Starting point: we are told that Heinlein's Rhysling and Anderson's van Rijn both visit Anderson's Old Phoenix inn - but please disregard Heinlein's The Number Of The Beast.

Pournelle's John Falkenberg is a substantial character in and of himself and in recent posts I found that, for me, he faintly echoed a couple of Anderson's characters. Onward.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I can think of another SF author who wrote a massively detailed "future history," who is also English: David Wingrove and his CHUN KUO series. Set in a timeline where China conquered the entire world in the 21st century. Alas, it was discontinued due to poor sales after eight of a projected 20 volumes were published. Pity, I enjoyed them.

Sean