Real And Fictional Histories

A year ago, I was rereading Poul Anderson's last future history, Genesis. Now, I am rereading his first future history, the Psychotechnic Series. In the latter, two unemployed drunks wrongly fear that self-conscious robots will replace humanity. In the former, Artificial Intelligence does replace humanity.

While rereading a future history, I am also reading some twentieth century history. Inevitably, the latter is more detailed and complicated than the former. Also, I can remember living through the second half of the twentieth century although I cannot remember any of the Psychotechnic History: there was no World War III in our version of the 1950s!

However, Anderson connects his fictitious history to our real history first by telling us what a participant in WWIII had done during WWII and secondly by letting this character draw a historical lesson from the Roman Republic.

And Anderson also wrote a historical novel set during that Republic. Such works, fictitious history and historical fiction, are so dissimilar that it is difficult to shift from thinking about one to thinking about the other. A while ago, I was totally focused on Anderson's works set in the past whereas currently I am totally focused on the Psychotechnic History.