One of the Last Men inspires Olaf Stapledon to write Last And First Men although Stapledon believes that it is fiction.
Raven dreams the historical text that Wells publishes as The Shape Of Things To Come.
The outer narrator publishes the Time Traveler's summary of the future of mankind and life on Earth.
"'At headquarters on Earth, there's a whole building full of specialists who are trying to construct a coherent history of the future from the beep, and speculate their way between the gaps, but for the really far future it's a sterile task.'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1973), AN EPILOGUE, p. 127.
"Thereafter [Havig] was assigned to reread Wallis's history of the future, ponder it in the light of what he had witnessed...'"
-There Will Be Time, IX, p. 90.
Wallis's history is an interesting document that seems to record his triumphal progress through the future.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It's a pity we didn't get lengthy extracts from "The Sachem's Book." Only a few bits and pieces.
Ad astra! Sean
It would be interesting. And difficult from a technical point of view -- it's surprisingly difficult to really see the world through the eyes of someone from a different time.
It's not just a matter of different beliefs. There are people around who'd agree with Wallis on any particular issue.
But they wouldn't believe them -in the same way- in as someone like Wallis, who grew up with them as the consensus of his society.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
First paragraph: I agree. Albeit, I think I would have surprisingly few points of disagreement with, say, St. Gregory of Tours in what he wrote in THE HISTORY OF THE FRANKS.
I would need to reread THERE WILL BE TIME, but I can possibly see myself agreeing with Wallis one or two times.
Your last sentence: I agree.
Ad astra! Sean
Context changes everything. For example, if you were born in 1200 CE Paris or London, even if you weren't 'naturally religious' (were me, for example) you'd be a theist.
Because in that context, people believed in God roughly the way we believe in atoms. Plenty of people still believe in God, but not in the same -way-.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. I would argue, however, that plenty of ORTHODOX Catholics would believe in God the same way their forebears did in AD 1200 Paris. The educated ones, anyway!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: no, orothodox Catholics today believe the -same things- about God (His nature, the Trinity, redemption by Christ's sacrifice, etc.) as their ancestors did in 1200 CE.
But they don't believe in them in the same -way-.
Genuine atheism was more or less inconceivable in that period. Note that even heresies -- including quite radical ones like the Cathars -- were all theistic. Even highly educated men like Aquinas were only familiar with atheism as a bizarre -concept-. He probably never met one in his entire life, and he'd be far more likely to than an ordinary man.
The existence of God (or some equivalent supernatural force) was taken as a given by pretty much -everyone-, all over the world.
If you read Cotton Mather's journals from New England in the late 17th and early 18th century, you realize that he's living in a different perceptual universe.
Heaven is just 'up there', Hell is just below his feet, supernatural signs and portents are everywhere, every experience is interpreted (and perceived right away) in a religious context. He's conscious of God's scrutiny and the Devil's malice every waking moment -- and they shape his dreams.
That's the 'default' state of human beings right up to Cotton Mather's own lifetime.
Shortly thereafter things changed.
When Pierre-Simon Laplace, the great astronomer (b. 1749) was asked by one of the later Bourbons where God figured into his cosmology, he replied:
"Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis."
That would have been literally unimaginable a few generations earlier.
Faith prior to then didn't mean faith in the existence of God -- as I said, they believed in that the way we believe in atoms.
Faith meant believing in things -about- God.
It's analogous to Aquinas' distinction between truths that can be discovered by reason and those that require revelation.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Very interesting comments. Yes, I think I can see how different eras will have different perceptions of how or what people believed in.
Ad astra! Sean
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