Olaf Stapledon's
"Olaf Stapledon had chronicled the entire future of our species, and then of the universe, but those books of his had no characters to speak of and were on a geological rather than historical scale."
-Poul Anderson, Afterword IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1, pp. 229-231 AT p. 229.
In fact, Stapledon's first volume chronicles eighteen human species on three planets.
Robert Heinlein's
"Heinlein wrote vivid tales of events happening to individuals, but civilization itself became a protagonist too, ever changing as the hopefulness of the first interplanetary era was lost in corruption followed by dictatorship, regained after a revolution, shunted aside in later turmoil, eventually restored as mankind approached racial maturity.
"Like most readers, I was fascinated." (ibid.)
That is a comparatively detailed summary. The individuals are people in all walks of life like a family holidaying on the Moon or a couple who not only live and work but also feel at home there. Anderson emphasizes that mankind progresses toward maturity, not just toward interstellar travel, although that does come also right at the end of this future history which is also the Future History.
The Psychotechnic History
"...to tell the story of humanity from the near future on through its expansion into the galaxy." (ibid.)
Here the culmination is "...the galaxy." More of this future history does occur outside the Solar System but racial maturity is also approached.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And my view is that Anderson became more and more skeptical about dreams of
"racial maturity." And since the Psychotechnic series began with such ideas, that contributed to him eventually abandoning this timeline, because he became to disbelieve in ideas like that.
Ad astra! Sean
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