Most people on Earth die, then the survivors rebuild. Both Poul Anderson and SM Stirling addressed this theme more than once.
Aliens visit. Later, everyone on Earth dies, then the alien abductees return! Thus, William Dexter combined the alien visitation and global catastrophe themes in 1954. I read a paperback edition published in 1962 and am now rereading the novel in a second hand copy of that same 1962 edition. See image.
This is Memory Lane, folks.
Anderson began publishing sf in 1947, Stirling in 1985. I had read Anderson's Guardians Of Time (1960) before Dexter's World In Eclipse but obviously nothing by Stirling yet! We appreciate sf whether dated or up-to-date.
4 comments:
Dated SF (sorta):
https://gizmodo.com/tag/retro-future
https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/
https://paleofuture.com/
-kh
Kaor, Paul!
I think the best of "dated" science fiction will remain timeless and very much worth reading and rereading even a thousand years from now. And that includes many of the works of Poul Anderson, such as THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS, THE MAN WHO COUNTS, ENSIGN FLANDRY, the HARVEST OF STARS books, etc.
Sean
"The good will out."
I wonder what English will be like 1000 yr from now?
https://www.wired.com/2008/06/st-essay-23/
https://www.audible.com/blog/science-technology/hear-what-scholars-think-english-will-sound-like-in-100-years/
http://theconversation.com/what-will-the-english-language-be-like-in-100-years-50284
http://jbr.me.uk/futurese.html#4
(If you can figure out the IPA symbols, here's a guess about how our Technic friends pronounced Anglic!)
-kh
Kaor, Keith!
I remember Sandra Meisel, in one of her essays about Anderson's Technic stories, suggesting that the Anglic of the Polesotechnic League and the Empire was a simplified form of our English. Which I interpreted as meaning the spelling of many words was rationalized (e.g., the "ugh" of words like "although," "though," was dropped). And something might have been done about words SOUNDING the same but having different spellings and meanings (such as "bear" and "bare", etc.). And the spelling of many personal names changed as well (like "Joseph" becoming "Josip").
We see mention in A CIRCUS OF HELLS that Flandry thought the Anglic used by the AI on Wayland was "quaint," due to it being the Anglic of more than five centuries in the past. And Flandry mentioned to Aychraych in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS that he had read, in translation, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrument." Meaning our English had become Old Angllic by Flandry's time.
And, of course, Anderson's story "A Tragedy of Errors" is all about the confusions and problems caused by characters in that tale misunderstanding what each other meant. Due to the post-Imperial Anglic of that story starting to diverge into different languages.
Sean
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