Wells and Stapledon wrote before we were born. Published in 1945 and set loosely after the war, CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength is an imaginative Christian reply to Wellsian/Stapledonian anthropocentric extrapolations.
American future histories are embedded in our lifetimes if we are old enough. The opening story of Robert Heinlein's Future History is set in 1951. His second volume is set around 2000. Larry Niven's Known Space History opens with:
"...the near future, the exploration of interplanetary space during the next quarter-century."
-Larry Niven, Tales Of Known Space (New York, 1975), p. xii.
That quarter-century is 1975-2000. Niven wrote in 1975 that:
"The Known Space series is now complete." (ibid., p. 223)
It was not. But think about 1975. It is now fifty years ago.
James Blish's Cities In Flight opens with Year 2018!
In Poul Anderson's main future history series, the early twenty-first century is:
"...a violent period of global unrest known as the Chaos."
-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 795-804 AT p. 795.
We are not out of that yet!
Anderson's Genesis, published in 2000, summarizes past human history, then proceeds through billions of years in a galactic future of post-organic intelligences that will not be superseded either in our lifetimes or for a very long time after that.
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Indeed, we are not out of our Time of Chaos or Warring States era. The Chaos of the Technic timeline finally ended when the Solar Commonwealth arose around AD 2100 to forcibly impose some order and unity on Earth. I have seen suggestions that if the US became an associate member of the British Commonwealth that would immediately make it conceivable the BC could become the nucleus around which Terra becomes unified. A real world Anglosphere could lead to that!
As so often, similar ideas can be found in Anderson's works. In the Hoka stories written by him and Dickson, "The Sheriff of Canyon Gulch" quotes from Adalbert Parr's ORIENTATION MANUAL how the Accession of the US to the British Commonwealth helped lead to the rise of a global state called the United Commonwealths. And the background of the Hoka stories makes it plain the United Commonwealths/Interbeing League was very libertarian.
Ad astra! Sean
One lesson from earlier future histories is... don't go into detail about the immediate future!
'tis why I always use alternate histories for the near-future stuff.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I sympathize but I don't entirely agree. You can still write interesting stories based on the real and now even if what you speculate about never comes to exist. Which is what happened with Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium series, based on the premise the US and USSR became allies so they could dominate the world and prevent would be rivals from challenging them. An idea Pournelle thought was reasonable in the 1960's.
Ad astra! Sean
It was reasonable then and we should read a future history as dating from the year in which its first instalment was published.
Kaor, Paul!
I think all of the stories set in the Co-Dominium timeline were set in the late Co-Dominium era and its succeeding eras. The stories about Col. John Christian Falkenberg were set in the years when the Co-Dominium was disintegrating. But no stories were set in the early Co-Do when many were grateful it ruled Earth.
Ad astra! Sean
You can make reasonable speculations about the near future -- but they're almost always wrong.
A large part of the reason for that is that chance plays a huge role in history -- low-probability accidents bouncing off each other.
Eg., the reason Frederick the Great and Prussia survived the 7 Years War is that the Czarina Elizabeth died early (at 53) and her heir was a demented Frederick the Great fanboy, who immediately dropped out of the war.
If she'd lasted another year, Fred would have been toast and Prussia reduced to another minor German principality -- so no Prussia-centered union of Germany in the next century.
If you examine "big" events, they almost always have elements of sheer unlikely accident.
Note that Elizabeth's heir was also a complete dweeb and idiot. His wife and successor (Catherine the Great) deposed him after a 'reign' of 186 days.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, even the most reasonable speculations about the near future are almost always going to be wrong. E.g., I doubt many seriously thought in 2023 that a certain ex-US President would be reelected last year.
I can tell the early death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia, and its consequences, is the basis of a favorite "what if" of yours. What kind of word would we have gotten if she had lived long enough to destroy her hated enemy Frederick II of Prussia?
Yes, her nephew Peter III was an idiot, letting his wife, with absolutely no claim to the crown, depose him!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, Catherine was much, much smarter than he was. And wanted power.
If German unification had happened at all without Prussia, it would probably have centered around Austria and would have been more Catholic-flavored. Which was one important reason Bismarck was a "klein Deutschland" (Little Germany) unifier -- he wanted a Germany that didn't have too many Catholics in it, one that Prussia could dominate demographically, so he was glad to exclude the German-speaking parts of Austria from the German Empire.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Agree, what you said about Catherine II's intelligence. But many Russians were not happy about her usurpation of the throne--compelling her to say she would hold the crown in trust for Peter III's son Paul.
Agree, what you said about an Austrian unification of Germany. No surprise, re Bismarck, I knew he was an anti-Catholic bigot, as his infamous Kulturkamf showed. Albeit he was wearying of his persecution of the Catholic Church by 1878 and was grateful Pope Leo XIII found ways for him to back down without too much humiliation.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I don't think Bismarck was a believer in any religion, from hints that he dropped -- he once said: "There are three great swindles abroad in Germany in our day: the religous swindle, the socialist swindle, and my nationalist swindle."
What he was concerned aboutr was the influence of the Papacy on Catholics, and also the association of Catholicism with backwardness, which was quite evident in the 19th century.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Now I am unsure, the article I read about the Kulturkampf states about Bismarck that he was a devout evangelical Lutheran. As for the "three swindles," that was probably simply Bismarck's talent for cynical witticisms.
I care nothing for what Bismarck or German "liberals" thought about the Catholic Church. They had no right to meddle with how Catholics educated their children or the appointing of bishops and parish priests.
The Kulturkampf blew up in Bismarck's face. Among other things it was a crash course in political education for German Catholics, leading as it did to them learning all about parliamentary politics and the rise of the Center Party, which rapidly became the second strongest party in the new German Reich. Which still survives today as the Christian Democrats.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: No, Bismarck gave the -appearance- of being a devout Lutheran... because it was politically convenient. I doubt he was even a deist, as a grown man.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Then I have to sit corrected, given your more in depth knowledge of Bismarck and German history. Also, I read about how the old Prussian conservatives, wop were mostly sincere Lutherans, became steadily about the Kulturkampf--because they could see how easily this harassment of the Catholics could be turned on them. Loss of their support would affect Bismarck's calculations!
Ad astra! Sean
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