Friday 15 November 2019

A Few Future Histories

"An interplanetary, then an interstellar, future for mankind despite continued conflicts on Earth."

Does the above formulation summarize most American future histories? Obviously a very different kind of future history would be one that featured no space travel whatsoever. After all, it has not yet happened on the schedule envisaged by American future historians.

Searching the blog for "CoDominium," the key word in Jerry Pournelle's future history, brought up some previous blog comparisons between future histories.

To summarize certain key points yet again:

Beginnings
Heinlein: after half a century of technological advances, the inner Solar System is explored and exploited at the turn of the twenty first century;

Anderson (1): after World War III, the UN world government launches space travel and becomes the Solar Union;

Anderson (2): after the Chaos, solar-powered space fleets explore the outer Solar System in the mid-twenty first century;

Blish: antiagathics are discovered in New York and anti-gravity is discovered on Jupiter during an intensified Cold War in the early twenty first century.

Stage II
Heinlein: there is an interregnum of space travel during the Prophetic dictatorship in the US;

Anderson (1): after the Second Dark Ages, faster than light interstellar travel begins and the Stellar Union is established;

Anderson (2): "The world's great age begins anew..." with the Polesotechnic League;

Blish: Colonials escape from the Solar System before the Bureaucratic State conquers the whole Earth and bans space travel.

Stage III
Heinlein: after the Prophets are overthrown, Coventry is established, space travel is resumed, including an STL generation ship, and the Howards go public;

Anderson (1): there is a Third Dark Ages;

Anderson (2): the League and the Solar Commonwealth decline and Earth is sacked;

Blish: antigravity is rediscovered and flying cities escape to trade with the Colonials who meanwhile have exterminated the Vegans.

I could continue this theme and might.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And sometimes I get so angry and frustrated about how little has yet been done about getting off this rock! There should have been colonies and bases on the Moon and Mars by now, complete with exploration and mining of the asteroid belt. Which again makes me hope so much that Elon Musk succeeds in founding his Mars colony in a few more years.

Ad astra!!! Sean