Unlike Wells, American future historians assume three highly questionable premises:
faster than light interstellar travel
easily colonizable extrasolar planets
extrasolar intelligences
I doubt that the future will be anything like this although I have no idea what it will be like except that we have good reasons to agree with some of Anderson's Ythrians in seeing the shadow of God across our future. The theme of the early part of the Psychotechnic History is triumph over adversity. Recovering from World War III, human beings colonize the Solar System. Defeating nationalists and militarists, they build a world government. Achieving technological abundance, they encounter other problems... The science of humanity that might have helped them is rejected although it will be recovered millennia later after two more Dark Ages. Maybe aspects of this theme will apply to us.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I regretfully agree with your skepticism about how likely a FTL means of interstellar travel will be discovered.
I disagree with your second premise, at least as regards Anderson's works. Over and over in his stories we see mention of how hard it will be to colonize even terrestroid planets. And of how dangerous even such worlds can be.
I'm also disinclined to agree with the third premise. My view remains that it's more likely than not that non-human intelligent life does exist. It's a strain believing that the Milky Way Galaxy, with 200 billion stars, has only one system with intelligent life!
I also disbelieve in any kind of predictive science of mankind, whether Asimovian psychohistory or Andersonian psychotechnology. And I continue to doubt "The Chapter Ends" belongs in the Psychotechnic time line.
Ad astra! Sean
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