Things That Change Everything

Fiction based on modern scientific cosmology assumes much about the past, e.g., cosmic and biological evolution, even if this is not made explicit, although Poul Anderson's works very often do make this explicit.

Past Events That Changed Everything

The first self-replicating molecule.

Multicellularity.

Central nervous systems.

The first immediate sensation.

Emergence of life from sea onto land.

Manipulation.

The evolution of intelligence.

The agricultural revolution.

Writing.

Printing.

The scientific revolution.

The Industrial Revolution.

Darwinism.

The automobile.

Telegraph and radio.

The discovery of other galaxies and of cosmic expansion. 

Automation.

Modern information and computer technology.

Now imagine that list extended into an indefinite future.

"'Between them, immortality and star travel changed everything. Not necessarily for the worse. I pass no judgments on anybody.'"

-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), IV, p. 26.

Thus speaks a three-thousand-year-old man, Hugh Valland. By "star travel," Valland means instantaneous jumps to other galaxies! By "judgments," he alludes to different lifestyles. His lifestyle remains simultaneously monogamous and celibate. You have to read the novel right to its punchline.

A PC Wren character remains celibate because the one woman that he would have married has married someone else. When I read that in my teens, I thought that it made sense. It certainly takes all sorts.

Ad astra.