The Past In Five Future Histories

Sometimes this blog appreciates Poul Anderson as a major contributor to illustrious traditions:

the literature of Norse mythology;

Biblical and Shakespearean allusions;

the Frankenstein tradition;

time travel;

future histories.

In Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker, the nebulae were conscious and intelligent before they condensed into galaxies.

In James Blish's Cities in Flight, the Earthman culture overthrew the Vegan Tyranny but was superseded by the Web of Hercules which became the Milky Way's fourth great civilization so there was something before the Vegans. Blish referred to the Vegan Tyranny in one of his Star Trek adaptations.

In Larry Niven's Known Space future history, the Slavers and their subject races were exterminated a billion years ago so that intelligence had to re-evolve in the galaxy. This also happened in the Star Trek universe because Niven adapted a Known Space story about a Slaver stasis box as a Star Trek animated episode.

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, it is known that the interstellar civilization of the Ancients ended. The Ythrians suspect that the telepathic parasites, the slinkers, were responsible. Aycharaych confirms to Erannath that his people, the Chereionites, were the Ancients. This earlier era of the Technic History timeline is so understated that a casual reader might miss it.

Future histories have their pasts which could be whole new series.