A Future History Spectrum

A future history can be either a single volume of fictional historiography or a series of fictional narratives set in successive future periods. However, the two approaches interpenetrate. At one end of the spectrum, HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon each wrote a future historical text book. At the other end, Robert Heinlein's Future History comprises only short stories and two novels with no introductions or interstitial passages. However, James Blish, having written the Okie series, which included two history lessons, then added historical introductions when the series was collected. As I suggested recently, Poul Anderson's Technic History reaches a peak of historiographical verisimilitude when, between two short stories set in different periods, Hloch of Stormgate Choth concludes his Earth Book of Stormgate, then the President of the Galactic Archaeological Society introduces a memoir about the Founder of the Terran Empire. Sandra Miesel added historiographical passages to Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

Brian Aldiss' Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand collects nine stories set in successive millennia and also includes long italicized passages discussing the history that elapses between these stories. In some chapters of Anderson's Genesis, characters converse and interact as in a short story or a novel whereas, in others, the omniscient narrator summarizes cosmic events over millions of years. Thus, both a British and an American author synthesized the characteristic British and American approaches to future history.

We, editorially speaking, might take another look at Genesis but first I will have to retrieve my lent copy.