We Are Living In A Science Fictional Future

Decades ago, I accompanied a Catholic priest to an interdenominational Charismatic meeting in Kent. Recently, I mentioned the priest's name to Sheila who Googled his name on her smartphone and learned that this guy has recently written a book which I then bought online and am now reading.

Years ago now, I wondered whether Larry Niven had written anything more about the Ringworld. Before leaving work on a Friday afternoon, I Googled "Larry Niven Ringworld" and discovered the then new title, Ringworld's Children. I located a copy of this book in the sf section of the Public Library the following day. 

I had thought that we would be having holidays on the Moon by now but we have fulfilled the sf prediction of a worldwide computer linkage and hand-held access to all recorded knowledge.

Is Niven's Known Space bigger than Anderson's Technic History? Not in my opinion.

"History of the Future" - Poul Anderson

We have acquired a copy of Startling Stories, Winter 1955. 

The Snows of Ganymede by Poul Anderson is on pp. 10-57.

p. 28 is interrupted by an editorial note entitled Poul Anderson's Future History. This note explains that Robert Heinlein wrote a "future history" and so also does Anderson.

p. 29 is a chart of "...the first 250 years of Anderson's history..."

The chart shows:

"Un-Man"

"The Sensitive Man"

"The Big Rain"

"Quixote and the Windmill"

"Holmgang"

The Snows of Ganymede

- as unequivocal instalments of this future history.

As in Heinlein's Future History Time Chart, some stories that are still "To be written" are also included although in brackets. These are:

("Marius")

("House in the Sky")

("Wolf")

("Cold Victory")

Only the first and fourth of these four were eventually written.

The article on p. 28 also lists instalments that had already been written but that could not be shown on the abbreviated chart:

"The Troublemakers"

"Gypsy"

"Starship"

"The Star Ways"

"Entity"

"Symmetry"

The disputed "The Chapter Ends," although published in 1953, is not mentioned.

Massacre

OK. I have had to reread Jerry Pournelle's The Mercenary at least as far as the end of Chapter XI in order to readdress a moral issue discussed recently in our combox, here.

The violence had stopped and the crowd in the Stadium was electing a new President. I would have left them to it. That President and any government that he would have been able to lead would have implemented disastrous policies? Maybe. Such accusations are always made during elections. Of course, Pournelle as author loads the dice so that his readers and those characters whom we regard as trustworthy know that this time the accusation is accurate. But it is never as clear cut as that in real life. People claim to know the truth of every contradictory proposition. And does such certainty justify replacing an election with a massacre? Never.

Sure, Falkenberg's men were fired on in the Stadium but this was because they had gone into the Stadium where Falkenberg had then announced the arrest of everyone present. And, after being fired on by some of those present, Falkenberg's men then, on his orders, used grenades and bayonets against a mostly unarmed crowd. Did Pournelle set out to defy and sicken his audience?

The novel is entirely about how human beings, both as individuals and in groups, large or small, interact with each other. This is what novels should be about. But this is an sf novel which should also be about our place in the universe and that does not mean just under-described terrestroid planets used as platforms for a continuation of all-too-familiar Terrestrial violence.

I am not sure how much more of Pournelle I will reread.

As previously stated, I will be away from this computer from early tomorrow until late on Friday. Saturday will be the last day of this month so maybe there will be a few more February posts then. 

Future History Background Details

Because Ansa is a planet in a story in Poul Anderson's Technic History, we appreciate later references in that History to Ansan vermouth, onion soup etc. See here. Also,"livewell" is an Avalonian flower imported to Earth. 

Early in Jerry Pournelle's The Mercenary (London, 1977), there are references to:

"...badges of the dark rich bronze alloys found on Kendicott, berets made from some reptile that swam in Tanith's seas."

-I, p. 30.

However, we have not been shown either Kendicott or Sparta yet. (At least, I do not think that we have. The publication history of this series is complicated. I have not read it all and there is much of what I have read that I do not remember.)

When Falkenberg and his men arrive on the planet Hadley, something large and black rises from the water but immediately sinks back. A local seems not to notice it whereas Falkenberg's Marines shout excitedly. Readers need to be shown more of native life.

What does Pournelle do well? He shows us a large number of plausible individuals in believable economic and political predicaments and conveys a strong sense of important events occurring both on- and off-stage. I am committed to rereading The Mercenary at least until the plot development which has been the subject of recent combox discussion. Whether I stay with the text after that depends on whether it is able to hold my attention.

Let's democratize the CoDominium instead of building an old-style Empire... Too late! That is what is going to happen.

Six Future Historians

In recent posts, we have referred to the four Campbell future historians:

Heinlein

Asimov

Blish

Anderson

- and two successors:

Niven

Pournelle

- a tight-knit literary group.

Anderson modelled his Psychotechnic History on Heinlein's Future History and contributed:

one story to the Robots sub-series of Asimov's Foundation and Empire future history;

three stories to the Man-Kzin Wars sub-series of Niven's Known Space future history;

one story to the War World sub-series of Pournelle's CoDominium future history.

Blish adapted Star Trek: The Original Series scripts as prose short stories and wrote an original Star Trek novel whereas Niven adapted one of his own Known Space stories as an animated Star Trek episode.

Niven and Pournelle collaborated on several novels, including two volumes of Pournelle's CoDominium future history.

Pournelle and SM Stirling collaborated on at least two Man-Kzin Wars stories.

I have probably missed something.

Colonizable Planets?

Like Isaac Asimov and unlike Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle introduced uninhabited terrestroid planets only so that his human characters would be able to build empires and wage wars on and between those planets as well as on Earth. Pournelle has Great Patriotic Wars on Earth, then Formation Wars and Secession Wars in the galaxy. 

Contrast Asimov's and Pournelle's sketchily described extra-solar planets with the details that Anderson provides about Hermes, Avalon, Dennitza, Aeneas etc.

For further discussion of this issue, see also:

Aldiss, Amis, Anderson, Asimov, Lewis

The question currently in my mind is not whether exo-planets have life but whether they have multi-cellular organisms.

See:

The Improbability Of Complex Organisms

The discussion is good even if not all the works discussed are.

Starward.

Another Comparison

Comparing future histories takes us temporarily away from Poul Anderson's works although we soon return to them. He wrote eight whereas sf writers usually write one at most.

In Pournelle's CoDominium History, the US and the USSR become the CoDominium whereas, in James Blish's Cities In Flight, the USSR incorporates the US. In both these histories, life is bad on Earth but no one knows how to improve it - but some can escape out of the Solar System. The CoDominium is succeeded by Empires whereas, in Cities In Flight, the Bureaucratic State is succeeded by interstellar trade and peripheral empires although the trade is more important - as it is in Anderson's Polesotechnic League and Kith series.

Like sf in general, future histories are a dialogue.

Addendum: The CoDominium suppresses scientific research. In Cities In Flight, security stifles research.  

Five Future Histories

OK. We are juggling five future history series here, by Heinlein, Anderson (2), Niven and Pournelle. That is plenty.

How do these futures begin?

Heinlein: technological innovations on Earth and the first rocket to the Moon.

Anderson, Psychotechnic History: recovery from nuclear war and early application of psychotechnics.

Anderson, Technic History: exploration of Iapetus, Ythri and Avalon.

Niven: exploration of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pluto.

Pournelle: use of a recently invented faster than light drive to forcibly relocate Welfare recipients to newly discovered extrasolar planets! (A down-to-Earth future, almost.)

The Chronology in Pournelle's The Mercenary (1977) covers the period, 1969-2060. The three parts of the book were originally published in 1971, 1972 and 1973. The "future" begins immediately after the publication date of any given story. Rereading The Mercenary in 2026, we notice that only four years in this Chronology remain in our future:

2030

2040

2043

2060

2030 will soon be with us.

Comparing Future Histories

Today: day trip to Manchester.

This morning over breakfast: starting to reread Jerry Pournelle, The Mercenary.

Purpose: to reassess Pournelle's future history, especially in comparison with Heinlein's and Anderson's.

General impression so far: Anderson wrote about future civilizations, including their wars, whereas Pournelle wrote about future wars.

Continuing to reread: Poul Anderson, The Peregrine.

Continuing to read: Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels ( a welcome return to recent Britain).

Got to go: a coach to catch.

Back here laterz. 

Details Of Interstellar Economics

The Peregrine, CHAPTER VI.

Solarians are economically self-sufficient and do not trade with the extra-solar colonies.

"A small but brisk trade went on between the stars of any given sector,..." (p. 38)

(Small, within each sector.)

"...carried by merchant ships or by such Nomads as weren't heading out into the depthless yonder." (ibid.)

(So some Nomads still do that.)

Despite the opening sentence of this post, some goods from Sol and other civilized systems reach the frontier where the need for spaceports, warehouses, depots, services, repairs, shops, factories, entertainment and administration means that there are cities although only one per planet or system: on Nerthus, Stellamont, the only physically realized extra-solar city in the Psychotechnic History.

Trevelyan Micah meets and (almost) "infiltrates" the Nomads of the Peregrine there.