"...a turbulent age, when commercial and genetic rivalry was a tooth-and-claw matter between giant combines; anything went, and the various governments were pawns in a galactic game."
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 9.
This differs both from Anderson's Psychotechnic History and from his Technic History:
it is further in the future;
rivalry is genetic as well as commercial;
the real powers are giant combines, not governments;
there is no reference here to non-human intelligences.
Any sf series beginning from now could start from a completely different set of premises:
much is being learned about exo-planets;
there is a serious astronomical search for evidence of Dyson spheres.
It is to be hoped first that much more will be learned in our lifetimes and secondly that this knowledge will not be lost soon! Earth might not recover from the Chaos, to use Technic History terminology. Future history is relevant to the present.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
That kind of grand sweeping summary was fairly typical of Anderson in some of his early stories.
Ad astra! Sean
It also puts odd things comfortably far in the future.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It certainly did.
Ad astra! Sean
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