Future Civilizations

Each future history series is a discrete narrative that can be read and discussed entirely on its own terms. On the other hand, some such series were written with knowledge of previous series and readers are, in any case, always free to observe any number of parallels. 

Maybe some future histories, like Heinlein's, just show Western civilization continuing into an indefinite future? On the other hand, Heinlein's Time Chart ends:

"Civil disorder, followed by the end of human adolescence, and beginning of first mature culture."

-Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold The Moon (London, 1963), p. 7.

This suggests the transcendence of all earlier civilizations. HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come, basing its narrative on completely different presuppositions and premises, also culminates in a first mature culture. After all the wars and revolutions, something better is possible. At least, that is one possible way of looking at the future. There are others.

Wells and Heinlein are names to conjure with regarding future histories and their successors include Poul Anderson and James Blish.

The opening instalment of Anderson's Technic History, "The Saturn Game," must be set during the transition from Western to Technic civilization. Earth is not yet politically united and we do not know whether the O'Neill colonies have been constructed yet. However, there is an Apollo University in Leyburg on Luna and the Solar System is being explored. The concluding four instalments of the Technic History are, in this sense, post-Technic although not, of course, post-technological. Human beings are, if not maturing, then at least mutating.

Volume I of Blish's Cities In Flight shows the Caesarism of Western civilization. Earthmanism exists in Volumes II and III. In Richard D. Mullen's Table of Classical, Arabian, Western and Earthmanist cultures, terms like "interregnum" and "Caesarism" are familiar if we have read Poul Anderson's accounts of John K. Hord's theory. In Mullen's Table, Classical culture is Arabianized, Arabian culture is Westernized and Western culture is Earthmanized. And that might be our last word on the subject!