To continue the line of thought from Influences III, the Psychotechnic History was just the first of many future histories from Poul Anderson.
AI
Heinlein had no fictional Artificial Intelligences - the interstellar spaceships in Starman Jones even lacked computers (not true: there is a conscious computer in Time Enough For Love but I do not count that novel as a volume of the Future History!);
(Addendum: While we were out, I remembered Mike, the conscious computer in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and expected to find his name in the combox when we got back. Nevertheless, Anderson's post-organic intelligences go far beyond anything that has been imagined for conscious computers.)
Asimov had two kinds of AI, robots and Multivac, with a remote successor of Multivac culminatingly reversing entropy;
in two future histories, Anderson has AIs superseding humanity and planning to survive the end of the universe.
Time Travel
Asimov addressed the circular causality paradox well in one short story and the causality violation paradox badly in one novel;
Heinlein addressed the circular causality paradox well in one novel and two short stories;
Anderson addresses the circular causality paradox well in three novels and both paradoxes well in a unique time travel series that stands with his several future history series and with The Boat Of A Million Years as a fictional history.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And you beat me to mentioning MIKE, the AI of Heinlein's THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS. That has to be almost the last of RAH's reasonably interesting book--before he had wholly succumbed to writing the mostly terrible books of his later years.
Merry Christmas! Sean
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