-Poul Anderson, All One Universe (New York, May 1997), p. 250.
I have imagined a novel written and set in 3000 AD, temporally transported to 2000 AD, translated and published without explanation. It would refer to then recent events without explaining them just as we can refer, e.g, to World War II, or just "the War," without having to explain that. Such a novel would be incomprehensible, disregarded and long forgotten by 3000 AD.
Sf can be not only set in our future but also show characters dealing with their futures, eg, HG Wells' Time Traveller and Anderson's Martin Saunders in "Flight to Forever." One of Anderson's Time Patrolmen reflects:
"It was a peculiar feeling to read the headlines and know, more or less, what was coming next. It took the edge off, but added a sadness, for this was a tragic era."
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 3, p. 17.
While reading headlines in 1955, he would know something of our situation in 2026.
Characters in James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time receive increasingly incomprehensible messages from successive periods of their future.
Fictional series can hint at future events long before divulging them. Near the beginning of The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, a fictional introduction refers to a recent (to the author) "Terran War" which does not occur until the end of Volume III.
Through seven volumes, Julian May refers to a Metapsychic Rebellion which finally occurs in a concluding volume.
We cannot know the future but can imagine and fictionalize about it.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It won't be long, however, before people who mention "The Great War" or "The War" will have to clarify they were thinking of the world wars which started in 1914 and 1939. The simple passing of time inevitably mean unexplained references of that kind will be less and less understandable.
Ad astra! Sean
1914-45 was a -bad- period. Since 1946, not so bad. Since 1991, fairly good.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I certainly agree 1914-45 was VERY bad.
We did have a couple of narrow escapes during the period 1946-91 wherein the US/USSR might have fought a nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when a reckless Khruschev tried to install nuclear missiles in Cuba but was forced to remove them by the US. The second time being that incident you mentioned about defective Soviet radar systems mistakenly saying US missiles had been launched at the USSR in the 1980's.
The 1970's was a pretty bad time for the US, not only domestically but also in foreign affairs. The Stalinists in N Vietnam, heavily supplied by the USSR and Maoist China, conquered Laos and S Vietnam and the insanely nihilistic Marxists of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge began their genocidal rule of Cambodia.
Fortunately, the USSR overreached itself by openly invading Afghanistan. And new leaders as varied as Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, and Ronald Reagan began the Great Rollback leading to the collapse of the USSR by 1991.
And we are still plagued by the threat of jihadist Islam.
Ad astra! Sean
I think that the Soviet Union bankrupted itself by stockpiling nuclear weapons instead of helping its people.
Kaor, Paul!
That's only part of the reason. Brezhnev was a true believing Marxist who exerted himself into expanding Soviet power as far as he believed was prudent. His aged successors and then the ineffectual Gorbachev lacked the ideological rigor and ruthlessness of Brezhnev.
Ad astra! Sean
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