Structurally, a future history has an earlier period and a later period and the earlier period has a pivotal character or characters who are builders of the future:
in HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come, Gustave de Windt, author of Social Nucleation (1942);
in Robert Heinlein's Future History, DD Harriman, "The Man Who Sold The Moon";
in Isaac Asimov's future history, Susan Calvin, robopsychologist;
in James Blish's Cities in Flight, Senator Bliss Wagoner, secretly behind the spindizzy and the antiagathics;
in Blish's The Seedling Stars, Jacob Rullman, inventor of pantropy, the science of human adaptation to extraterrestrial environments;
in Blish's Haertel Scholium, Adolph Haertel and also Thor Wald, inventor of the Dirac transmitter;
in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Valti and Fourre;
in Anderson's Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn, leader of the independents in the Polesotechnic League, and David Falkayn, discoverer of Mirkheim and Founder of Avalon;
in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history, John Christian Falkenberg, mercenary.
Wells' Philip Raven dreams an "Outline of the Future" whereas Asimov's Hari "Raven" Seldon predicts the future. Raven's dreamed text includes a chapter on Karl Marx and Henry George.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Your last paragraph beat me having to ask why you omitted Hari Seldon as a "pivotal character" from your first mentioning of Asimov's works.
I'm still rereading Blish's THEY SHALL HAVE STARS, but I do see your point about Senator Wagoner.
And I would have included Manuel Argos and Dominic Flandry as two of the pivotal characters we see in Anderson's Technic Civilization stories.
Sean
Sean,
I was trying to concentrate on "earlier periods," though.
Paul.
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