Thursday 19 January 2017

Pivotal Characters

Starting to post about "Pivotal Characters," I find that I have already posted about "Important People"! My point is that a future history is about future historical events - to quote Wells, "Things To Come" - and about the future of humanity - to quote Stapledon, "Last and First Men." Thus, a series just about a single individual like Nicholas van Rijn or Dominic Flandry, is not a future history. However, particular installments of a future history series feature individual characters and early installments might feature some characters whose role is pivotal for the subsequent history. We can look for such characters although we will not necessarily find them in every case. With an eye to that earlier post but also making some additions or alterations, we find:

Wells
de Windt wrote Social Nucleation.

Heinlein
Harriman "sold the Moon."

Asimov
I think that we were told the name of the founder of US Robots?

Blish
Rullman invented pantropy.
Wagoner secretly oversaw the development of the spindizzy and the antiagathics.
Haertel invented the Haertel overdrive.
Wald invented the Dirac transmitter.

Anderson
Valti wrote the first psychotechnic equations.
Emett discovered gyrogravitics.
Anson Guthrie founds Fireball.
Guthrie's granddaughter is the "Mother of the Moon." See here.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would argue that Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Manuel Argos, and Dominic Flandry were pivotal characters in Anderson's Technic Civilization stories.

Sean