our technological civilization ended in 1998 - in SM Stirling's Emberverse timeline;
the city of Ys, founded in the fifth century BC, was destroyed by the sea at the end of the fourth century AD;
Rome was founded in 753 BC and its Western Empire was in retreat from northern Europe when Ys was destroyed;
Technic civilization, succeeding Western civilization in the twenty first century, will end with the Fall of the Terran Empire in the mid-fourth millennium.
These are weighty matters for fiction primarily intended to entertain.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, we have Isaac Asimov's First Galactic Empire, which we see in its early centuries in PEBBLE IN THE SKY and during its decline and fall in the first three FOUNDATION books. I simply wish Asimov had managed to handle such "weighty" matters better and more plausibly!
No real need to again rehash Asimov's weaknesses as a writer--we have both listed them elsewhere!
Sean