Monday 13 March 2023

Future History Structures

Future histories have interesting structures.

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History divides into the slower than light (STL) and faster than light (FTL) periods.

Anderson's Technic History divides into pre-Flandry, Flandry and post-Flandry periods. There are other refinements that I have summarized too often to repeat here.

Anderson's Genesis divides into human and post-human periods. Humanity is re-created in the "post-human" period but we have to read on to learn that.

In Genesis, PART ONE, Chapters V, VI, VIII and IX describe the future of Earth:

in V, Terra Central converses intimately with Laurinda Ashcroft;
in VI, the Worldguide dictates to feuding clans;
in VIII, Serdar and Naia merely refer to the remote Ecumenicon;
in IX, the omniscient narrator refers simply to "the intelligence."

In PART TWO, Gaia converses with a fellow post-organic. The omniscient narrator revives the word, "organism," to refer to members of the galactic brain although most of their life processes are on the quantum level.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The society described in Part One, Chapter Six reminded me of late Heian Japan (AD 794-1185) as the latter was starting to break down into violent clan feuds culminating in the rise of military dictators called shoguns.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Another point here is that "Gaia" is a name used only for the purpose of narration. The post-organics know and recognize each other and communicate without using names.

S.M. Stirling said...

Well, a name is just a label for an identity; if you can perceive an entity's nature/history directly, a label is unnecessary.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I thought of that as well.

Ad astra! Sean