Any novel set in a future period implies a future history linking now to then. Some novels are set in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Others refer to extraplanetary colonies and therefore imply a history of colonization. Sometimes textual references help readers to identify intervening historical events. In
The Time Machine, over a span of eight hundred millennia, humanity conquers nature, then degenerates into Morlocks and Eloi. Later, life declines as the Sun swells and reddens. This is an alternative future history to the same author's
The Shape Of Things To Come.Poul Anderson's The Avatar, although not a future history, briefly summarizes American civil wars, world unification and four generations of Brodersons, a good piece of future historical writing. Tomorrow we will maybe continue to reread The Avatar.
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Wells was groping in the right direction re the Sun, except it will take far, far longer for Sol to expand into a red giant than 800,000 years.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Morlocks and Eloi were in 802,701 AD. The reddening Sun was much later in the Time Traveller's "Further Vision."
Kaor, Paul!
Dang, I got it wrong! But I don't think Wells was thinking in terms of it taking a minimum billion years before the Sun reddens.
Ad astra! Sean
He did make it a long time but doesn't tell us dates for the Further Vision.
Kaor, Paul!
Good, astronomy was still relatively primitive then, in 1895, compared to what is known today.
Ad astra! Sean
"astronomy was still relatively primitive then, in 1895"
Yes. Nuclear fusion was an unknown concept, so astronomers thought of stellar evolution in terms of stars contracting to generate the heat they radiated. This makes the time scale for the sun's existence far shorter than we now know it to be.
IIRC Well's time traveler thought in terms of the red sun he saw being smaller in radius than the current sun & earth's orbit somehow contracting to make the sun apparently larger.
Kaor, Jim!
Guess I should reread THE TIME MACHINE, at a time when I was trying to make my mind up on whether to read either THE POSSESSED or THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, both by Dostoevsky.
Ad astra! Sean
He did see it as red and big, though1
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that reminded me of main sequence stars expanding to become red giants. Altho that was not known in 1895.
Ad astra! Sean
The 1890's were the period in which the neo-Newtonian physical synthesis started to fall apart -- for example, geology was showing that the Earth was much older than the physics of the time allowed.
Incidentally, we're in another such moment with regard to cosmology and physics.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Good, the sciences need to be shaken up and turned upside down to avoid becoming complacent, stagnant, and sterile.
Unfortunately, too many evangelical Protestants still cling to belief in a Young Earth.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: my family never did -- benefits of High Church Anglicanism... 8-).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But the Young Earth Chronology so many evangelical Protestants insist on goes back to the Anglican Bishop Ussher! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
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