Years of birth, where known:
1923 Lazarus Long
1939 Lucas Garner
1970 Anson Guthrie
1982 Susan Calvin
In Heinlein's Methuselah's Children, eleven years after 2125, Long claims to be aged 213. Guthrie is older than Calvin, despite starring in a much later future history.
I remember Wells observing that, if The Shape Of Things To Come is a true future history, then its principal protagonists are already young men starting their careers - the future is that close - but I cannot find that passage in the book.
Wells describes The Shape Of Things To Come as:
"...this long record of the battle of reason with ignoble folly..."
-HG Wells, The Shape Of Things To Come (London, 1974), Introduction, p. 26 -
- a description that equally fits Anderson's Psychotechnic History.
All future histories are one!
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, Anderson came to be DISSATISFIED with his Psychotechnic stories, as you know.
Sean
Sean,
But it still stands in a powerful Wellsian sf tradition.
Paul.
The problem with future histories is that the future comes along and spoils things... 8-).
But the various series are all good anyway. (Just off to meditation group.)
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Granted, what you said about the Psychotechnic stories being very Wellsian. Nonetheless, Anderson came to be dissatisfied with them, both for technical, story writing reasons, and more fundamentally due to him coming to disagree with his earlier political beliefs.
Mr. Stirling: ONE way a "future history" can avoid being "spoiled" by real world events would be to place it in an alternate universe or timeline. As you did with your Draka and Lords of Creation series.
Sean
Sean,
Or far enough in the future, like the Technic History. That way it remains a future history.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
True, I had that in mind as well, when I recalled Anderson gave us only one firm date in that series, mentioned in "The Saturn Game," set about 30 from now.
Sean
Sean,
And "The Saturn Game" was a late addition. For a long time, the Technic History began with "Wings of Victory."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, for a long time "Wings of Victory" was chronologically the earliest of the Technic stories, set perhaps around AD 2150. But no dates are given in that story.
One of things that fascinated me about JRR Tolkien's appendices to THE LORD OF THE RINGS, esp. Appendix A, was how he gave us dates in PLENTY. Down to months and days.
Sean
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