More On Future Histories

In non-blog time, I am rereading Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy yet again. In blog-time, I am rereading Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind although hardly in order to post about it in as much detail as on several previous occasions. I have skipped past some passages because I want to focus on specifically Avalonian characters and settings which do comprise the major part of the text. Rereading this novel generates reflections on American future histories as a whole. For me, the major future historians are Heinlein, Blish, Anderson and Niven with Asimov and Pournelle lagging a considerable distance behind.

Blish's Cities In Flight holds up as a future history series until somewhere in Volume III by which time the antiagathics are keeping a small number of characters alive indefinitely during interstellar flight so that we have ceased to be aware of the passage of historical time on any planetary surface. Essentially this situation also obtains in Anderson's Tau Zero and The Boat Of A Million Years. Blish's The Seedling Stars is a short future history series similar to Anderson's Maurai History, a few stories scattered along a future timeline. Blish's multi-branched Haertel Scholium contains some definite future historical writing but does not comprise a single linear history.

So our attention begins to focus more specifically on Heinlein, Anderson and Niven. And, of course, Anderson.

A Beginning And An End

I am struck by the contrast between The Man Who Sold The Moon which is Volume I of Robert Heinlein's Future History and Genesis which is both a single-volume future history and the last of eight such fictional histories written by Robert Heinlein's successor, Poul Anderson. For me, these two volumes are the beginning and end of American future historical writing. Of course someone whose reading of sf is more recent and up-to-date can certainly tell me otherwise!

Wanting to write more about these two works, I find that I have already done so:

Haven't Future Histories Come A Long Way?

Even better, Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization and Larry Niven's Known Space future history series are in there as well. I cannot improve on this post at present. But someone else might.

Four Levels Of Future Historical Discussion

We can:

compare several future history series, maybe imagining that they exist in parallel timelines (we do know that Rhysling of Heinlein's Future History and van Rijn of Anderson's Technic History both have access to Anderson's inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix);

contemplate a single future history series in its entirety from its opening instalment in a comparatively near future to its concluding instalment in a remoter future;

focus on a single period in a particular future history, e.g., Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate is a future historical volume in itself quite apart from the fact that it is followed by the nine-volume Flandry period and its single-volume sequel;

focus on very specific details in a single period, e.g., precisely what Christopher Holm and Tabitha Falkayn eat and drink in the Old Phoenix in Centauri on the Gulf of Centaurs on the Coronan continent on the planet Avalon in the Domain of Ythri during the Imperial period of the Technic History!

Poul Anderson presents many more such details for readers to read, reread, compare, criticize etc.

Length In Future Histories

Poul Anderson's Technic History beats Robert Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's own earlier Psychotechnic History as a fictional history purely in terms of its length. The longer a future history series is, the more historical periods it can have and the more details each of them can have. There is far more to be said about Anderson's Polesotechnic League period than about Heinlein's early interplanetary period and also far more to be said about Anderson's Terran Empire period than about Heinlein's Prophetic and post-Prophetic periods. The Future History concludes with two stories about the first generation ship whereas the Technic History concludes with four stories about successive post-Imperial periods.

Anderson's three Maurai stories just make it into future history status because they are set in different generations of a fictional linear history. Then they are followed by the long novel, Orion Shal Rise, and the time travel novel, There Will Be Time, which covers several past, present and future periods. Anderson fulfills, then transcends, every sf category.

Tabitha Falkayn And War

The People Of The Wind, VI.

Tabitha Falkayn displays the same kind and level of sensitivity and understanding as Caitlin Mulryan in The Avatar. She avoids an argument with Arinnian while remaining friendly towards him.

Tabitha says:

"'...we birds have gotten pretty good at picking up face and body cues.'" (p. 510)

Planha and other Ythrian languages combine sounds with feathered "body language." Human Avalonians, particularly choth members/"birds" understand and speak Planha even though they cannot reproduce its bodily aspect. But this makes them extra sensitive to bodily cues in their own species.

At the very end of Chapter VI, that happens which has been anticipated from the opening paragraph of Chapter I. A holovid recording declares:

"- war declared. A courier from Ythri has delivered the news in Gray, that Terra has served notice of war.'" (p. 511)

There will be battles in space and on Avalon. We will be there.

The Two Avalonian Cities

The People Of The Wind.

The two Avalonian cities, Gray on Falkayn Bay and Centauri on the Gulf of Centaurs, are very different from each other and are described in detail. Arinnian flies above then inland from Gray and spends time with Tabitha in Centauri where it is usually safer for him to be Christopher. We find that we have previously posted about both cities:

Gray

In Centauri

Livewell Street

In The Phoenix House

In The Phoenix House And The Nest

In The Nest

Gray and Centauri are more concretely realized than Stellamont on Nerthus in Poul Anderson's earlier Psychotechnic History. It is good to be able to compare them.

Time Charts And Chronologies

I suppose that the omniscient narrator who is the most abstract and distanced from us, the readers, is the compiler of future history time charts or chronologies in:

Robert Heinlein's Future History

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories

James Blish's Cities In Flight

Larry Niven's Known Space future history

Also, one of Isaac Asimov's successors compiled such a chronology in an add-on Foundation volume.

There is no personal voice or input in any of these compilations but they can hint at ramifications that are beyond our ken like humanity moving towards its first mature culture at the end of Heinlein's seminal Time Chart. We do not see this in any of the stories but we know that the future continues beyond the end of any future history even in Cities In Flight where two universes end but others begin.

Poul Anderson's characters reach the end of this universe and the beginning of another both in Tau Zero and in The Avatar.

Who Narrates?

The People Of The Wind, V.

Concerning Ythrian public affairs:

"The Planha speakers happened to be the most wealthy and progressive when the first explorers arrived; one is tempted to call them 'Hellenistic.'" (p. 496)

Is one? Who is this "one" that suddenly appears on the page? Pp. 496-498 are a three-page explanatory passage courtesy of the omniscient narrator who should remain the background as much as possible rather than draw attention to himself with a pronoun - if that is what it is - like "one." This reads as if some future historian like Hloch of The Earth Book Of Stormgate is directly addressing his audience and, if that is what is happening, then we would like to know who this historian is, when he is writing and so on. Hloch's Introductions and Afterword in the Earth Book are excellent additions to the Technic History, genuinely enhancing our knowledge of the background of individual stories, and it would have been good if some comparable historian had succeeded him for the rest of the Technic History.

The narrator of the Prologue to Mirkheim uses the pronoun, "We...," (p. 1) thus identifying himself as a member of the population that he addresses.

Anticipations Of War

The People Of The Wind.

Eve Davison to Philippe Rochefort on the pacifist planet, Esperance:

"'This world was settled by people who believed in peace,' she said. Her tone mourned rather than accused." (IV, p. 487)

"'- the star named Pax, the planet named Esperance are being geared for war. It hurts.'" (p. 488)

Daniel Holm in phone conference on Avalon:

"Anger crackled through clearly enough. Two of the three holographs on the com board before him seemed about to climb out of their screens and into his office. No doubt he gave their originals the same impression." (V, p. 490)

There is disagreement about defense spending, of course.

Mourning on Esperance and anger on Avalon: Poul Anderson presents the full gamut of human responses to the prospect of war. The story is slanted so that Daniel Holm's war preparations are fully justified, of course. It is a good story.

Hypotheticals

The People Of The Wind, IV.

Phillipe Rochefort and his Cynthian crew member watch a taped lecture about the enemy:

"'Otherwise the pre-Ythrian must have appeared fairly similar to Terran birds.' Pictures of various hypothetical extinct creatures went by." (p. 483)

There is some scope for alternative versions of reality here. Images of Ythrian organisms that had appeared in an animated adaptation could reappear as "hypothetical extinct creatures" as viewed by Rochefort in a live action adaptation.

I think that something like this was done in a Superman comic. Kryptonian organisms that had been real in an earlier version of the story reappeared as speculative reconstructions in a TV documentary about Krypton that was viewed by the characters in a much later version. A series that continues for decades can either ignore its earlier episodes or refer back to them in interesting ways. A series written by a single author usually does not last long enough for that to happen but screen adaptations can produce some interesting variations - as well as outright travesties.