living from moment to moment;
deciding what to do next;
planning ahead;
reading horoscopes and speculative fiction.
Since each choice made means many not made, future histories and alternative histories are complementary.
In sf:
HG Wells' Time Traveler travels through tomorrow into futurity and returns to today;
the protagonists of many stories, novels, series and films live in our future;
the characters in James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time receive messages from different periods of their future;
Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Maurai History and Twilight World begin in the aftermath of World War III;
Anderson's Technic History begins in the aftermath of the Chaos.
What might Anderson have written in 2019, given that, in October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that only twelve years remain to prevent an unprecedented climate catastrophe?
A Potential Alternative Histories Trilogy
I. The Catastrophe.
II. The Catastrophe prevented.
III. A contemporary novel, written twelve years later.
(This is the second post published since returning from London earlier this evening. See Dornford's Discrepancies.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Welcome back from your trip to London!
As for climate change, one factor I've seen mentioned at John Wright's blog is that winters seem to be slowly becoming colder, not warmer. I did not follow this up in detail, so I can't really say much more. But, it's an indication of how complex, even CHAOTIC, the climate is.
But I do continue to believe it's better, on balance, to replace oil, coal, natural gas, with nuclear energy and a space based solar power satellite system. And oil is better and more efficiently used for other things than energy!
Sean
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