Definitive Volumes

A future history series can include a definitive volume. Ideally, such a volume would cover the entire period of the future history and would convey some overall impression of its successive stages. However, I can think of only one volume that meets these precise criteria: Tales Of Known Space by Larry Niven. This collection begins with interplanetary exploration in the concluding quarter of the twentieth century and ends with a peaceful interstellar civilization in 3100.

Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volume II, The Green Hills Of Earth, is definitive up to a point. After the initial technological advances and first Moon landings of Volume I, The Man Who Sold The Moon, Volume II recounts events in different parts of the Solar System about 2000, ending with a hint that things will get worse before they get better, thus paving the way for the Prophetic dictatorship and interregnum of space travel in Volume III, Revolt In 2100 - thus not covering the entire Future History but bridging three main periods, from 1952 until the late twenty-first century.

Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate does not cover his entire Technic History but does span its first main period from the Grand Survey to the colonization of the main Avalonian continent. The Solar Commonwealth and the Polesotechnic League rise and fall during this period and, since, by the time of the compilation of the Earth Book, the Terran Empire has arisen and grown, the way is prepared for Dominic Flandry who dominates the second part of this future history series.