A future history series needs a few opening stories to get it off the ground. In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the capacity to produce an escape velocity fuel is developed at the end of the third instalment and the first Moon landing happens in the fourth instalment. Until that point, the History has been a progression of technological advances but social regression will emerge in Volume III.
Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins in the aftermath of World War III which reads like the aftermath of World War II - well, worse - but this time a predictive science of society is being applied. The speculative fiction begins here.
Larry Niven's Known Space future history series begins with four stories of interplanetary exploration. Anderson's Technic History began with two stories of interstellar exploration but then one story of interplanetary exploration set earlier was added later. Thus, The Earth Book Of Stormgate begins on the extra-solar planet, Ythri, whereas The Technic Civilization Saga begins on the Saturnian moon, Iapetus.
We have come a long way from Wells and Stapledon and even from Heinlein.
(What is wrong with that cover image?)
8 comments:
Aside from the lack of a spacesuit on the man standing on the moon?
That is enough, surely?
Kaor, to Both!
I agree, as regards the spacesuit, but another thing is wrong with that illustration. I assume that male figure is supposed to be THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON, DD Harriman. But, despite his desperate longing to go to the Moon, he was never able to do that.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
He did get there in "Requiem."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But that was after Harriman's death, when either his cremains were buried on the Moon or a container of water from the oceans his ashes were scattered in was deposited there.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
No. He died there.
Paul.
IIRC in "Have Spacesuit Will Travel", some benevolent aliens give Kit a spacesuit that is at least partly a forcefield that holds air in while being invisible. Of course that is another story, so putting such a 'suit' on a man wearing a business suit does not fit "The Man Who Sold the Moon"
Kaor, Paul!
Dang! My memory erred again, been a long time I read "Requiem."
Falling behind again, real world stuff to do.
Ad astra! Sean
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