Consider the recent innovations in information and communication technology that we in 2021 take for granted:
PCs
laptops
hand-held computers
mobile phones with internet access
texts
google
email
Amazon
Facebook
social media
apps
zoom
on-line editions of newspapers
many people able to work from home during a lockdown
Fax has come and gone. 3D printing is somewhere around. Contemporary novels present higher tech than future histories. People a thousand years in the future in twentieth century sf do not live very differently from people living at the time when the sf was written. The major change to everyday life is flying cars. Heinlein's daily life of the future is mainly people living on the Moon instead of on Earth.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
While the fairly minimal use of computer technology in Anderson's Technic stories is where it has to be considered the most "dated," we do see fairly sophisticated use of computer tech in them, esp. in THE GAME OF EMPIRE. The "minicomputers" mentioned in Chapter 1 of that story might be thought analogous to tabletop or tablet computers.
And our real world civilization has not yet surpassed the Technic in antisenescence, cloning, or in space.
Happy New Year! Sean
Heinlein in his early period tended to underestimate social change; and in his later period he was sort of... ah... idiosyncratic about what he expected to happen to, say, family systems.
To say the freaking least!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
To say nothing of how, beginning with STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, the quality of Heinlein's stories tragically declined. He became a gosh darn bore about sex and incest!
I recommend to new readers of RAH only his pre-STRANGER stories, with THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS a partial exception, among his post-STRANGER works.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean : a big part of that was Heinlein getting free of his editors. The unedited versions of his earlier stories are much more like his later stuff. And the greater freedom of subject matter after the mid 60’s also freed him to do stuff he’d always wanted to. His own life was, shall we say, a bit unconventional in some respects.
(Personally, I’ve always preferred monogamy. It’s so restful.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I remember that, how RAH would gripe and grumble about his editors, from GRUMBLES FROM THE GRAVE. What Heinlein was forgetting being that writers NEED good editors, to argue with them when editors think their writers were making mistakes.
I guess you have to be 20 to be thrilled at the idea of cavorting with a harem of pretty girls! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
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