Saturday, 14 September 2019

Two Triads

Robert Heinlein's Future History and Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories form not a trilogy but a triad because Anderson directly modeled the Psychotechnic History on the Future History, then wrote a longer Heinlein-model future history which became the Technic History.

There is another, overlapping, triad.

(i) The Future History, Volume V, Orphans Of The Sky, is about a "generation ship," a multi-generation interstellar spaceship.

(ii) The Psychotechnic History includes a story about a generation ship.

(iii) Brian Aldiss told me at the British Easter Con 1970 (guest of honor: James Blish) that he read Orphans... and thought that he "could do it better." So he wrote Non-Stop which he then referenced in his single volume future history, Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand. (Starswarm, about many planets in a single period of galactic history, completes the trilogy.)

Thus, three future histories each incorporate a generation ship.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And of course Anderson's TALES OF THE FLYING MOUNTAINS has Interludes and a final story set on a terraformed asteroid turned into a generation spaceship.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
I did not think of it as a generation ship. I do not think that generations were going to be born and die en route.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would need to check, but I think the expectation was for the journey to last at least two generations. And the OLDER members of the crew didn't expect to live to see it end.

Ad astra! Sean