"..begins in the twenty-first century, with recovery from a violent period of global unrest known as the Chaos."
-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 611-619 AT p. 611.
In our timeline, we have evaded World War III, as yet, but not the Chaos.
In both of these future history series:
"New space technologies ease Earth's demand for resources and energy permitting exploration of the Solar system." (ibid.)
The current blog agenda is to reread the opening installment of the Technic History, "The Saturn Game," in search of clues as to how life is lived on post-Chaos Earth. Such clues will be few because this story is set entirely off Earth. Our first sight of life on Earth in this future history is San Francisco Integrate in the Solar Commonwealth several centuries later. Series about interstellar explorers and traders or, later, an interstellar secret agent, assume a vast civilization that such individuals serve but impart almost no information about the inner workings of that civilization. Thus, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" presents a welcome insight into the daily life of the future, an issue that Robert Heinlein had addressed in the opening volumes of his Future History.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
At least we get some glimpses of how the government of the Terran Empire works in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN when we see Chunderban Desai reviewing the official mail he got from Terra. And don't forget, bad man tho he was, Aaron Snelund's perceptive comments about the civil service in THE REBEL WORLDS.
Ad astra! Sean
A period of chaos is a much safer bet than a specific future war! 8-).
When Poul was writing the Psycotechnic books, the idea that the World Wars would continue until only one Power or alliance was left standing was still widespread.
That was one possible outcome, and I would argue without nuclear weapons was the most likely one.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, however much the Soviet Politburo blustered in public that a nuclear was not out of the question.
And the chaos we are having now is what has actually happened!
Ad astra! Sean
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