An alternative history comments on our history:
"'...that's a stereotype. Like the unemotional half-Martian Science Officer on the Federation Starship New Frontier...'" (p. 105)
"'If the ancients hadn't given us an interesting couple of planets to explore and squabble over -'
"'And the ancients themselves to worry about,' he put in.
"'- and that, odds are we'd have destroyed Earth by now.'" (p. 107)
This dialogue is set in 2000 AD. We have not destroyed Earth yet - by 2026 - but it is not for want of trying!
CHAPTER FIVE reveals that the 1970s films about an archaeologist with a bullwhip were set on Venus.
See also:
Imagine individuals living in and accepting each of these alternative histories.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to love these topical/cultural asides Stirling inserts into his stories. Asides any reasonably alert SF fan should mostly understand.
Ad astra! Sean
Tho' note that the Cold War was immediately after WWII, and then (in this universe) sort of petered out. A lot of SF from the forties and early fifties just assumed it would lead to WWIII.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I remember that, esp. a line by a character reflecting that all of a sudden, the Venus/Mars discoveries made quarreling over Berlin less interesting for the great powers. NOT that rivalries between them ceased--they merely shifted elsewhere, off Earth.
It was reasonable for SF writers of the time you referred to giving us speculations about what a WW III might be like, during or after it. Anderson gave us TWILIGHT WORLD, and I've read Pat Frank's ALAS, BABYLON and Shute's ON THE BEACH.
Ad astra! Sean
'twas nuclear weapons that brought the cycle of the World Wars to an end. They made fighting a war between Great Powers sort of... futile.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, but that has not ended struggles with each other by great powers and would be great powers. I can see lunatic regimes, like the theocracy in Iran, actually using nukes if the ayatollahs ever managed to get them. Or a great power might miscalculate and nukes start flying.
Ad astra! Sean
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