Saturday 28 March 2020

When Does The Future Begin?


I thought of this question in relation to what I call the "Future History Triad":

Heinlein's Technic History;
Anderson's Psychotechnic History;
Anderson's Technic History -

- but, of course, every other future history that I have read came to mind so we wind up with a complicated list.

British
Stapledon's Last And First Men begins after "the European War";

Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come begins "today," in 1933;

CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, not a future history but its author's reply to Stapledon and Wells, begins after World War II, with Jane Studdock remembering the words of the marriage service;

RC Churchill's A Short History Of The Future begins with a discussion of many well-known sf works on the fictional assumption that they are histories of the future;

Brian Aldiss' Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand begins with a future war and a commentary explaining that war in terms of instincts, fears and racial adolescence (Poul Anderson's "protean enemy" yet again).

OK. Maybe the Americans can have another post.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'm a bit surprised you did not list Asimov's Robots/Empire/Foundation "future history." I agree his work is not as satisfactory as I had once thought it was, but it is a "future history."

And there's also Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium timeline, with Larry Niven being a co-author with Pournelle of THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE and THE GRIPPING HAND. To say nothing of contributions from other writers such as Stirling and Anderson himself. After the Technic series, I found the Co-Dominium stories quite satisfactory!

Ad astra! Sean