Saturday 3 November 2018

Past And Future

HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come was published in 1933. Its "Book The First," about "To-day And To-morrow...," discusses, in section 7, "The Great War of 1914-18" and ends, in section 13, with 1933 when "'Progress' Comes to a Halt." "Book The Second" is about "The Days After To-morrow..." Thus, the future is firmly grounded in the past.

Well's Time Traveler departs from 1895, his present, our past.

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, beginning in the aftermath of World War III, features former participants in World War II.

Julian May's interconnected series comprise:

the Pliocene Exile Tetralogy (past);
Intervention (present);
the Galactic Milieu Trilogy (future).

Rogatien Remillard, first person narrator of some "present" and "future" chapters, was born in 1945 and thus joins our illustrious list:

1923 Lazarus Long
1939 Lucas Garner
1945 Rogatien Remillard
1970 Anson Guthrie
1982 Susan Calvin

These are only the years of birth that are known. I don't think that the Psychotechnic History tells us when Fourre was born but please correct me if I am wrong.

Like Anderson's Time Patrol series, The Pliocene Exile features time travel and an account of the Atlantic breaking through to form the Mediterranean. (That happened in our "past," of course.)

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Dang! I forgot about Julian May's INTERVENTION books. And I'm pretty sure May included detailed genealogies of the Remillard family in INTERVENTION.

I was esp. interested in INTERVENTION because of how much of the story was set in New Hampshire, not far from where I live. I was parochial enough to be pleased at seeing a major SF series being set in NEW ENGLAND, my home region.

Sean