Friday 25 March 2022

About The Future

Sf can be about the future in two ways: set in the future or about people learning about the future - in different ways.

HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come begins with Raven dreaming the book of the future.

Wells' Time Traveler and Poul Anderson's Jack Havig recount future events to their present-day narrators.

Robert Heinlein's Future History begins with a story about a machine that accurately predicts dates of death. Insurers are concerned about how this will affect the future of society.

Both Asimov and Anderson imagine a predictive science of society:

"'The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.'"
-Isaac Asimov, Foundation (London, 1967), PART I, 6, p. 27. 

"...Valti's matrices...simply told you that given such and such conditions, this and that would probably happen. It was a cold knowledge to bear."
-Poul Anderson, "Marius" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1, pp. 1-17 AT p. 7.
 
James Blish's instantaneous Dirac transmitter always emits a flash of light and a beep of sound when switched on:
 
"'The Dirac beep is the simultaneous reception of every one of the Dirac messages that has ever been sent, or ever will be sent.'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1973), CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 93.
 
Wells, twice
Anderson, twice
Heinlein
Asimov
Blish 

2 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

Though the Dirac beep might include all the messages that possibly -could- be sent, in a multiverse.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Wells was a pioneer, so I know we should not perfection, but I thought Anderson's character Jack Havig a more convincing narrator of future events than the Time Traveler.

Ad astra! Sean