What Now For The Future?

Larry Niven's Known Space future history series begins with four stories about the exploration of the Solar System in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Thus, although most of Known Space was written after most of Poul Anderson's Technic History, the beginning of Known Space is "earlier" than the beginning of the Technic History because the latter places interplanetary exploration in the first half of the twenty first century. Ever since Wells and Stapledon wrote in the 1930s, future histories, like other futuristic speculations, have always reflected the time in which they were written so what would a future history be like if its author began to write it in 2023?

It has been pointed out in the combox on this blog that the way to avoid a future history becoming outdated too quickly is to set its opening instalments or chapters in a further future as Anderson had done with the Technic History before he added "The Saturn Game." Anderson's culminating single-volume future history, Genesis, hurries past the near future to present longer term technological speculations. But why should a future historian want to avoid becoming outdated? As Heinlein wrote, future history is not prophecy but acknowledged fiction. Anderson made a late addition to his Psychotechnic History.

But what would a near future history series look like now? Surely the imminent ecological catastrophe would have to be incorporated? Can we even assume a resumption of space travel? I cannot get excited by the prospect of four people circumnavigating the Moon at the end of next year.

Should people keep writing novels and making films in the present climate? Novels were written during World War II, including CS Lewis' reply to Wells' and Stapledon's future histories.