Friday, 18 April 2025

Great And Small

A comprehensive future history series should chronicle both great and small events. Can we demonstrate this from the works of Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson?

An instalment of Heinlein's Future History can be about:

psychological problems of working with nuclear energy
new energy and transport systems
the entrepreneur who got mankind into space
personnel problems in a space station construction crew
a hero of the Space Patrol
the Blind Singer of the Spaceways
a couple living on the Moon
a family visiting the Moon
an accident on the Moon
a child lost on the Moon
a new sport on the Moon
a spaceman with vertigo
an indentured servant on Venus
the Second American Revolution
life under the post-Revolutionary Covenant
life inside a lost interstellar spaceship

An instalment of Anderson's Technic History can be about:

psychological problems of deep space exploration
first contact with aliens
one man's harrowing encounter with alien theology
students in San Francisco Integrate
an apprentice in the Polesotechnic League
a boy growing up on Avalon
a young man hiking and camping on Avalon
the Founder of the Terran Empire
interstellar war
rebellion and potential jihad
an orphan sleeping in a ruined temple on Imhotep
a legendary figure of the post-Imperial Long Night
encounters between differently evolved branches of humanity

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

To be strictly accurate Anderson never shows us the very first non-humans met by humans in the Technic stories. Only first contact with Ythrians and other races encountered during the first Grand Survey.

Ad astra! Sean