However, Volume I of the Emberverse series, Dies The Fire, was published in 2004. Thus, the Change and its consequences have now become an alternative history. Further, Volume X, The Given Sacrifice, covers the period from Change Year 26/2024 AD to Change Year 46/2044 AD and will show us the grown grandchildren of the hero of Dies The Fire. Thus, this alternative history is also becoming a future history. However, it is a future not of high tech and space travel but of swords and magic. It is future but remains alternative, a new blend, like reading Merlin's Prophecies in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History Of The Kings Of Britain.
3 comments:
I noticed a long time ago that nearly all near-future SF becomes alternative history. So, I said to myself, why not work with that assumption in mind from the beginning?
Straight out extrapolative near-future SF is just too likely to make you look silly even before you're dead...
Dear Mr. Stirling and Paul,
Mr. Stirling: I do understand your point. All the same, well done near future hard SF is still worth reading for its own sake, even if it becomes an "alternate history" which never comes to pass. A well known example of that being Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven's CoDominium series: we DON'T see the US and the now former USSR forming a CoDominium headed by a Grand Senate to dominate Earth. But their series, to which you too made contributions, are amply worth reading.
Paul, however fascinating and richly worth rereading rereading, the world we see in the Emberverse timeline is not one I would like to actually see happening. Setting aside the horror and agony of billions of people immediately starting to die, the world of the Change seems so impoverished, cramped, limited, and small scale in its hopes and ambitions compared to what we have now. Frustrating and inadequate tho our efforts in space has been, we are STILL doing SOMETHING out there. And serious people are working, thinking, planning, and dreaming of far greater things. After the Change all that became IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Sean
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Even granting that most people after the Change are too busy simply trying to survive, I would have liked seeing some of the people born after the Change giving some thought to what they had never even known they had lost. Everything from advanced medical care, fast travel and communications, to hopes and aspirations BEYOND Earth. I would have liked some Emberversers reading and puzzling over pre-Change hard science fiction, such as the works of Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, etc. Would any Emberversers too wonder what is OUT there, around other stars?
Sean
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