The Future

Life and fiction meet in the blog. A post can be inspired by a lengthy series written by Poul Anderson, by a single phrase in an Anderson text or by an everyday event.

Life remains turbulent in Britain and around the world. Will the twenty-first or twenty-second century bring forth:

a World Federation (Robert Heinlein's Future History);

a Solar Union (Anderson's Psychotechnic History);

a Solar Commonwealth (Anderson's Technic History);

a nuclear war (Anderson's Maurai Federation etc);

a global political dictatorship (some Anderson short stories);

ecological collapse (happening now);

alien invasion (highly unlikely!);

an American theocracy (also the Future History);

humanoid robots (Asimov; one Anderson short story);

regular space travel (in much sf but long delayed);

post-organic intelligences (Anderson's Genesis);

the completely unexpected (certainly)?

What we definitely will experience is a single as yet unknown future.