Expanding Histories

Olaf Stapledon's one volume future history and one volume cosmic history cover immeasurably more space and time than HG Wells' one volume future history.

Similarly, Poul Anderson's main future history series covers more space and time than Robert Heinlein's seminal Future History. By Heinlein's Future History, I mean only the original five volume series - or should I say "four and a half volumes," because Orphans Of The Sky, collecting "Universe" and its sequel, "Common Sense," is short and is merely a sidebar to the linear history, which culminates with the Howard Families' triumphal return to the Solar System at the end of Methuselah's Children.

The Future History has scarcely any series characters. Two works star DD Harriman, "The Man Who Sold The Moon," and two feature the mathematical genius, Andy Libby, but Dahlquist, Rhysling and Long each appear only once and Scudder, although important, remains off-stage. Nehemiah Scudder does not appear yet founds a theocracy, later overthrown by the Cabal. In Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Manuel Argos appears once and founds an empire, later defended by Naval Intelligence.

Although Argos would not appreciate the comparison, he and Scudder play comparable pivotal roles in their respective histories. Each restores order after a social breakdown. However, Scudder's order is merely oppressive whereas Argos establishes a long-lasting Pax.

(Pax includes oppression:

("...the last organization with high morale, the Navy, lives for war and oppression and anti-intellectualism."
- Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 6.

(Examples of oppression are Snelund in Sector Alpha Crucis and Flandry on Brae.)

Another difference is of spatiotemporal scale. The Angels of the Lord rule the United States for decades whereas the Terran Empire rules a four hundred light year diameter sphere of interstellar space for centuries.

And the Technic History has several series characters whose names need not be listed yet again. Young Flandry is an introductory trilogy of novels about a single character but is also one segment of a future history, building on earlier information about the Polesotechnic League and Merseia. The series is long enough to allow for a very leisurely approach to the development of its characters and their milieus.