Psychotechnic: a Heinleinian time chart;
Technic: social change (from van Rijn's expansion to Flandry's decline);
Maurai: post-nuclear Earth and the beginning of interplanetary travel;
Flying Mountains: asteroid colonization and the beginning of extrasolar colonization;
Rustum: extrasolar colonization;
Kith: interstellar trade;
Harvest of Stars: human-AI interaction;
Genesis: post-human AI.
Comments
Anderson soon transcends his Heinleinian origins.
This summary makes the future histories sound like a single series.
They are a single conceptual progression.
Appropriately, they culminate in Genesis.
Every end is a new beginning.
Three ideas are common to the two AI future histories:
human personalities can be recorded and preserved in artificial, post-organic systems;
they can also be incorporated into the collective AI;
intelligence will survive the heat death.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Whoa! This is a lot of blog pieces in one day, even for you! And I'm not complaining! I"m pleased that this is one of busiest "one man" blogs I know of. Only wish more people would deposit comments in the comboxes.
It seems odd to say: "...social change (from van Rijn's expansion to Flandry's decline." After all, personally speaking, both of these men prospered thru out their lives. It would be more accurate to say we see Technic Civilization prospering during the Polesotechnic League and declining centuries later during the Empire in Flandry's time.
I know we disagree on this, but I would have included the Hoka/Interbeing League stories co-authored by Anderson and Dickson in your list of "future histories". After all, it comprises ten stories and one novel (with that last occurring long enough after the stories for the Hoka character to have graduated from Oxford University).
I know you didn't care that much for the Hoka stories, because of finding them too too slight to deserve much attention. But I like them and I don't think all science fiction has to be sternly serious. Plus, along with the lighthearted humor you can find serious ideas in the Hoka stories.
One of the differences GENESIS has from the HARVEST OF STARS books is how the former shows the human race NOT succeeding in shaking off the well meaning, but smothering cocoon of a pampered, idle, luxurious, but meaningless and powerless existence. Leading to the human race dying out in despair. And, of how Gaia, the AI of Earth, lonely for mankind, used stored DNA to bring back human beings. Here we see Anderson trying out a more PESSIMISTIC outcome, in contrast to the more OPTIMISTIC speculations in the HARVEST books, where, at various times, the AIs were defeated.
It's all very well for AIs to talk about ways and means for "Intelligence" to survive the heat death of the universe. But most HUMANS will regard so remote a scenario with indifference. And most esp. so if, to advance that goal, the AIs try to shunt off the human race to a meaningless and pampered existence. So, while I don't object to planning to survive the heat death, I would first insist on human beings alone being ultimately in charge.
I'm sure more comments can be thought of by me, such as how human DNA was used to clone real bodies for downloading human personalities into, in the HARVEST books (another strange idea I had trouble grokking), but this note is long enough!
Sean
Sean,
Of course, I was trying to summarize. I meant the economic expansion in van Rijn's time and the imperial decline in Flandry's time. Nothing about them personally!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Understood! It simply looked odd, strictly on the face of what you wrote.
Sean
Post a Comment