Most sf characters, like all real people, do not know the future although there are a few exceptions:
the Time Traveler has seen the end of life on Earth;
James Blish's Service agents cause the intergalactic future from which they receive messages;
Poul Anderson's human-Holont civilization receives messages from its future (see The Holont: Second Potentiality and Forever);
in Anderson's There Will Be Time, Jack Havig knows, having seen it, that he is building a multi-species interstellar civilization with either FTL or STL + time travel;
in Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, Malcolm Lockridge winds up at the beginning of the Bronze Age but already knows that there will be a peaceful interstellar civilization after the time war between Wardens and Rangers;
Anderson's Time Patrol agents live, work and die knowing the future of mankind in their timeline although, since their work involves preserving events like the Holocaust, I have become morally uncomfortable with this series.
In Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years, the mutant immortals, having lived through human history and into an indefinite future, agree to meet again in another million years although they know no more of the future than anyone else and are optimistic to assume that they will continue to live for that long.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And not just the Holocaust! Time Patrol agents should feel doubts about the rightness of preserving a timeline including the gulags of Lenin and Stalin.
I too have my doubts that the mutant immortals of THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS could live for a megayear. Things like violence or simple accidents of one kind or another would gradually pick them off.
Ad astra! Sean
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