Tuesday, 13 August 2024

Amalgamation And Integration

A future history series gains substance as fictional history by amalgamating and integrating previously independent series.

Larry Niven
The Lucas Garner and Beowulf Shaeffer periods became the Known Space history.

Poul Anderson
The Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry periods became the Technic History. A third narrative strand is the Ythrians.

Isaac Asimov
The Robots and Galactic Empire periods became a Robots and Empire history although the Empire novels had already covered more than enough centuries and even millennia to constitute a future history.

James Blish
Blish's pantropy, Okie and Haertel overdrive works did not converge but instead became distinct fictional futures with the Haertel Scholium internally differentiating further.

Jerry Pournelle
I am less familiar with the CoDominium History. How do its chronologically earlier and later instalments connect?

Robert Heinlien
From the outset, "Lifeline" and "If This Goes On -" were in the Future History Time Chart even though there was no direct connection between them.

CJ Cherryh
I know that Cherryh's future history incorporates more than one sub-series but I never got into it.

Anderson's and Niven's are the most similar and, of these two, I prefer Anderson's.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I might have included at least one more future history in this list: Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind stories. I am aware, IIRC, that you did not much care for them--even tho I liked them.

Ad astra! Sean