Ways in which Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History resembles its model, Robert Heinlein's Future History:
Luna City is a "...roaring commercial metropolis." (I, p. 21);
big, heavy Bo Johnson would not have got his spaceman's certificate before the ion drive was introduced;
transport companies with names like Fireball and Triplanetary move passengers and cargo between planets;
unlike more expensive places, the Last Chance does not centrifuge and alcohol, although expensive, is more effective in low gravity;
a Venusian escaping a bar fight must be a spaceman because he knows to leap up, kick the wall and fly out through the door into the corridor.
Thus, a sense of daily life in the future and also technological progress in the interplanetary period with the introduction of the ion drive.
2 comments:
Though I think they must have had some fairly efficient, high-delta-V rocket systems before the ion drive, to do all that.
Kaor, Paul!
And FIREBALL is a very evocative name, later reused by Anderson for the Fireball Company founded by Anson Guthrie in the HARVEST OF STARS timeline.
Ad astra! Sean
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