Monday, 2 December 2019

After The Chaos

Futuristic fiction and concern about the real future are two sides of a single coin. I want this blog to last but it will not if our civilization goes under in this century.

Poul Anderson's Technic civilization comes after:

"The Chaos..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game " IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 1-73 AT III, p. 26.

The new civilization arises because:

"...early industrial operations in space offered the hope of rescuing civilization, and Earth, from ruin..."
-ibid., II, p. 6.

This includes "...the burgeoning of wholly new industries..." within orbiting O'Neill colonies.
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT IX, p. 139.

Will this happen after our current Chaos?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I have argued for dating our Time of Chaos as long ago as the Sarajevo Assassination in 1914.

And I have discussed, mentioned, and argued for precisely those things: O'Neill habitats, industrial operations in space, the founding of new colonies off Earth, etc., many times here. As has Jerry Pournelle in books like A STEP FARTHER OUT, and Poul Anderson in essays like the "Commentary" he wrote for SPACE FOLK. And for a more recent work making the same argument, THE CASE FOR SPACE, by Robert Zubrin.

I think it's disgusting, outrageous, and disgraceful how the US turned away from space after the last Moon landing in 1973! More than forty years wasted! And it's only in RECENT years that few visionaries like Elon Musk are finally doing something EFFECTIVE about getting off this rock. It's people like them who might save our civilization.

Ad astra! Sean