Why Empires?

Why are there so many interstellar "Empires" in American sf? Notable examples are the works of Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Frank Herbert, H Beam Piper and Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle. Although James Blish's Cities In Flight features an interstellar "Hruntan Empire," the main emphasis of this series is on trade by the flying cities.

Empires resonate with much past Terrestrial history. The word "empire" evokes a realm both vast and powerful - although also oppressive and militaristic. It seems both implausible and unimaginative as a future form of social organization.

Poul Anderson wrote well about interstellar empires, then moved on to other kinds of fictional futures. "The Star Plunderer" makes the founding of the Terran Empire by Manuel Argos seem plausible and the Dominic Flandry novels make interstellar Imperial administration seem credible.

Greg Bear wrote:

"...Rome has been much abused. Lay off Rome for a while. And give me no spaceships in feudal settings...unless, of course, you are Poul Anderson, but you are most likely not."
-Greg Bear, "Tomorrow Through The Past" IN SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979, pp. 38-41 AT pp. 40-41.

I agree that Poul Anderson made even feudalism with spaceships work. I can accept Niven and Pournelle's Empire of Man as part of a literary tradition and as the setting for their First Contact novel but sf must move on, as Anderson did.

More On American Future Histories

I listed four Campbell-edited future historians (Heinlein, Asimov, Blish and Anderson) but maybe should have included a fifth:

"H. Beam Piper was first and last a John W. Campbell writer, his first SF story, "Time and Time Again," appeared in Astounding in April 1946, and his last, "Down Styphon!," in Analog in November 1965."
-John F. Carr, "The Terrohuman Future History of H. Beam Piper" IN Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Fall 1979.

However, returning to the authors that I do know something about, Poul Anderson not only wrote hard science fiction in the tradition of Robert Heinlein  but also, and completely independently of JRR Tolkien, wrote heroic fantasies derived from Norse mythology. These two literary traditions converged when Heinleinian sf writer Jerry Pournelle included "Sauron supermen" in his CoDominium future history.

In The Mote In God's Eye (London, 1979), Niven's and Pournelle's characters speculate as to whether isolated extrasolar colonists might not only regress sociologically but also evolve biologically. The concluding installments of Poul Anderson's Technic History address this question.

Mote presents its own distinctive version of hyperspace: instantaneous transit along "tramlines" (p. 32) between certain stars, with the usual restriction that this kind of travel is impossible from too deep within a gravity well. Travel time is necessary to and from tramline end points. By contrast, I think that the version of hyperspace in Anderson's Technic History is unique because it involves many instantaneous quantum jumps through normal, familiar, 3D space, not through any other kind of space.

We recognize Anderson-type world-building in the description of the New Caledonia star system on pp. 32-34 of Mote. I do not think that Heinlein did this? Direct Imperial rule of New Chicago after the defeat of its rebellion recalls the comparable situation on Aeneas in Anderson's The Day Of Their Return.

For the nationality of a space warship's Chief Engineer, Niven and Pournelle follow neither Heinlein nor Anderson but Star Trek:

"Like many engineering officers, Sinclair was from New Scotland. His heavy accent was common among Scots throughout space." (p.15)

How can a handful of writers create such fascinating texts? It continues to be a blast.

Five First Empires

(i) After the Fall of the Galactic Empire, the Second Foundationers plan to build a Second Empire in a mere thousand years. If they succeed, then the fallen Empire will be renamed the First.

(ii) Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archeological Society, refers to excavations in the ruins of Sol City, Terra, and to Manuel Argos, the Founder of the First Empire.

(iii) Galactics who have come to evacuate Earth fly among the ruins of Sol City, capital of the legendary First Empire.

(iv) When Leonidas IV proclaims the Second Empire of Man in 2903, the Empire that had ended in 2640 becomes the First.

(v) The Terran Federation is succeeded by the First Galactic Empire.

(i) = Isaac Asimov's Foundation future history.
(ii) = Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.
(iii) = Anderson's Psychotechnic History.
(iv) = Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history.
(v) = H Beam Piper's Terrohuman Future History.

Future Histories Overview

Some future histories I am unfamiliar with and would welcome input:

Cordwainer Smith;
H Beam Piper;
Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The ones that I do know divide into four groups:

British
Wells
Stapledon
Aldiss
RC Churchill (not well known)

Campbell-edited
Heinlein
Asimov
Blish
Anderson

An American sequence (overlapping with "Campbell")
Heinlein
Anderson (2)
Niven
Pournelle

Anderson's later future histories
six or seven

The magnitude of Poul Anderson's contributions is evident from these lists.

Overlapping Themes

I mentioned the overlapping sf themes of alternative histories and causality violation ("changing the past") time travel fiction here and had already discussed them here.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series is a culmination of causality violation. What would be a corresponding work of alternative history? Unfortunately, I have as yet read very few novels or series by Andre Norton, H. Beam Piper or Harry Turtledove, although I understand that Piper's Paratime Police are a sort of opposite number of the Time Patrol.

Of the alternative histories that I have read, SM Stirlings' are consistently superb, in particular The Peshawar Lancers and Conquistador. ...Lancers shows us not only an alternative history but also its corresponding literature and art.

Appropriately, the single Time Patrol story written by Stirling addresses one of the most important speculative questions of alternative history: what would the twentieth century have been like without the assassination at Sarajevo? Thus, this story is a major synthesis of these two temporal themes.