"Now the Empire has fallen, the Long Night descended upon the tiny fraction of the galaxy which man once explored and colonized. Like Romano-Britons after the last legion had withdrawn, people out in the former marches of civilization do not even know what is happening at its former heart. They have the physical capability of going there and finding out, but are too busy surviving. They are also, all unawares, generating whole new societies of their own."
-Poul Anderson, The Night Face IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 541-660 AT INTRODUCTION, pp. 543-544.
Thus, both these future histories chronicle historical periods long enough to encompass the rises and falls of interstellar civilizations. Although this may seem obvious, the original five-volume Future History by Robert Heinlein did not do it:
the first Moon landing occurs off-stage during the fifth of the sixth installments in Volume I;
regular interplanetary travel is not described until Volume II;
interplanetary travel is interrupted in Volume III, and resumed in the concluding story of this volume, but the interruption is caused by a theocracy in the US, not by a collapse of civilization;
the first interstellar round trip occurs in Volume IV and extra-solar colonization is due to begin at the end of the volume;
Volume V, a short addendum about events elsewhere, does not continue the history which therefore is complete in Volumes I-IV.
The Future History ends with mankind about to leave the Solar System but the journey continues in later future histories.
6 comments:
The British Empire declined when and how it did largely because of the strain and demoralization and cost of the World Wars, IMHO. Britain was crucial to the outcome both times; without that degree of sacrifice and steadfastness, Germany would have won. With unknowable consequences, but I doubt they would have been good.
An interesting and plausible analysis.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
While I'm a bit more uncertain about how bad it would have been if Wilhelm II's Germany had won WW I, I absolutely agree a victorious Nazi Germany would have been hideous!
And, yes, that sense of strain and demoralization suffered by the UK led, unfortunately, to the disintegration of the British Empire.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the Kaiserreich has gotten an undeserved free pass because it wasn’t as bad as the Third Reich... but that is a very, very low bar.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, from all the signs and indications we got from Germany's behavior during WW I.* But, the complicating factor, to me, is that we can't absolutely know how a victorious Second Reich would have handled matters if the Central Powers had won WW I.
Ad astra! Sean
*I recall how Churchill candidly wrote, in his history of WW I, that the Entente Allies weren't that much better than Germany. Germany may had led the way in crime, but the Entente powers were a close second.
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