In Pournelle's CoDominium History, the US and the USSR become the CoDominium whereas, in James Blish's Cities In Flight, the USSR incorporates the US. In both these histories, life is bad on Earth but no one knows how to improve it - but some can escape out of the Solar System. The CoDominium is succeeded by Empires whereas, in Cities In Flight, the Bureaucratic State is succeeded by interstellar trade and peripheral empires although the trade is more important - as it is in Anderson's Polesotechnic League and Kith series.
Like sf in general, future histories are a dialogue.
Addendum: The CoDominium suppresses scientific research. In Cities In Flight, security stifles research.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I was reminded of Anderson's stories "The High Ones" and "The Pugilist." In the former all of Earth was conquered by the USSR while in the latter Earth was divided between the USSR and Maoist China, with a fallen US ruled by the Soviets. Dystopian!
However bad, foolish, short-sighted, etc., it was, I can follow the reasoning for why the CoDominium and the Soviet Bureaucratic state suppressed scientific research. That kind of research might lead to discoveries whose consequences would undermine the rule of these regimes.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that the Soviet Union embraced Lysenkoism -- which wasn't an accident.
Marx was a 'premature Lysenkoist", a Lamarkian, who believed in the inheritability of acquired characteristics. That crippled Soviet biology for generations.
That was a popular theory in the mid-19th century, before Mendel's work became widely known.
And it's incorporated into Marxist theory, in subtle ways.
In essence, in the late 18th and the first half of the 19th century, Western thought in general grossly overestimated the "plasticity" of human nature. Marx prolonged that into the 20th, after it was refuted by genetics.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Another reason for dismissing Marxism as the catastrophe its been!
It actually made sense for the Soviet partner in the Co-Dominium to be so hostile to basic scientific research.
Lamarckianism might have been discredited far sooner if Fr. Gregor Mendel's pioneering research in genetics had not been ignored.
Ad astra! Sean
Mendel's research was ignored because it clashed with the general "zeitgeist" of the times, I think. It did win out in the end.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Was that "zeitgeist" a combination of Lamarckianism and anti-Catholicism? I know many who liked to call themselves "advanced" thinkers in those days were hostile to the Church. For that matter, many still are these days.
Ad astra! Sean
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