James Blish's Cities In Flight opens with They Shall Have Stars, published in 1956, set in 2013. The first manned vehicle in space was in 1962. (In our timeline: Yuri Gagarin, 1961.) Titan Station was established in 1981.
They Shall Have Stars is preceded by two quotations, the first from the real Dylan Thomas, the second from the fictional "Acreff-Monales: The Milky Way: Five Cultural Portraits." The Prelude to Book One is preceded by a quotation from the real J. Robert Oppenheimer. Thus, Blish's lead-in to his future history is unusually elaborate. See The Structure Of They Shall Have Stars, coincidentally posted in 2013.
The Technic History refers to the historical theory of John K. Hord whereas Cities In Flight refers to Oswald Spengler's The Decline of The West.
Cities In Flight resembles Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains in that it begins with a politician giving attention to a crackpot theory of gravity. See:
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
More exactly, it was a desperate bureaucrat, facing the defunding of his agency by a hostile Congress, who paid attention to the crackpot theory of gyrogravitiics, to at least temporarily stave off that defunding. And to his amazement, gyrogravitics turned out to actually work and be practical! As we see in the partly humorous "Nothing Succeeds Like Failure."
Ad astra! Sean
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