The Shape Of Things To Come was a British political future history of its era whereas the Technic History is the ultimate (so far) expression of the, very different, Heinleinian model, individual stories set against a background of historical process: progress, breakdown, reconstruction, further conflicts etc with maybe an eventual mature civilization, which is another Wells parallel.
In the Technic History, Chunderban Desai predicts disintegration and a dark age but adds:
"'There is no absolute inevitability... I suppose, even this late in the game, we could start afresh if we had the means - more importantly, the will.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT III, p. 389 -
- whereas the Time Traveller, a pessimist:
"...thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end."
-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 16, p. 101.
Wells, Heinlein, Anderson: science fiction and real issues.
The Time Traveller witnesses the old age of Earth. Flandry witnesses the old age of Chereion. Another planet and an older civilization.
See also here.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteI far prefer Chunderban Desai's view, in which he states it might be possible for even a decadent civilization to sometimes undergo a vigorous revival. One real world example, discussed by both myself and Anderson in letters, being the astonishing revival of the Eastern Roman Empire, starting around 780. A revival which lasted for centuries.
Ad astra! Sean