Monday, 24 November 2025

Interstellar Travel In Eight Andersonian Future Histories

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History and Technic History each involve a different kind of hyperspace. 

In Anderson's Maurai future history:

the three short stories do not involve space travel;

Orion Shall Rise introduces interplanetary travel;

There Will Be Time introduces interstellar travel which will be either FTL or STL but, in the latter case, with time travellers travelling within interstellar spaceships.

(If time travel is mathematically equivalent to FTL, then the interstellar travel will be FTL.)

Everything after this is STL.

In Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains, people in the first interstellar spacecraft discuss how to teach the history of asteroid colonization.

In his Rustum History, extrasolar planets are colonized.

In his Kith History, people living mostly in spaceships conduct interstellar trade.

In his Harvest Of Stars History, human beings and conscious AI's interact, eventually on an interstellar scale.

In his Genesis, post-organic intelligences explore the universe while the Terrestrial intelligence re-creates extinct humanity, a return to the theme of the first modern science fiction novel, Frankenstein.

Starward.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

I just realized that I have a special fondness for TALES OF THE FLYING MOUNTAINS.

Ad astra! Sean