"The Man Who Sold The Moon" is the title
story of the first volume of Robert Heinlein's Future History. Genesis, a
late novel by Poul Anderson, is a single volume future history. D.D. Harriman,
the entrepreneur who "sold the Moon," lived underground because, despite its
suitably comfortable interior, his dwelling was an elaborate nuclear air raid
shelter. Laurinda Ashcroft, a human-AI interface in Genesis, lives
underground because the ecology is planned. Thus, these works reflect the
concerns of the different periods in which they were written.
When Laurinda
receives a visitor in her underground home, there is, for me, a faint echo of
Delos Harriman's conversation with his wife in their underground home but the
most notable feature of these works is the many differences between them.
Harriman and Laurinda inhabit earlier and later periods of different fictitious
timelines so they cannot meet except in the imagination of a reader who sees
some tenuous connection between them.
Another measure of the distance
travelled by future histories is simply the vast difference in scope and scale
between Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's much longer History of Technic
Civilisation. In the Future History, capitalism develops the Solar System but
becomes oppressive. Social disorder on Earth leads to an American theocracy.
This is followed by the Covenant which, after some further troubles, leads to a
"mature culture." In the Technic History, capitalism develops a vast volume of
interstellar space but becomes monopolistic. Social breakdown in the Solar System leads to an Empire which lasts for several centuries and volumes and is
followed, after the barbarism of the "Long Night" period, by bigger and
stabler civilisations in several spiral arms.
"If This Goes On -" is the first
of only two novels in Heinlein's Future History. Ringworld's Children is
the fourth novel in Larry Niven's Ringworld Tetralogy and maybe the eleventh
novel in his Known Space future history depending on how we count them. (There
are works written by Niven, co-written by Niven and written by others.) "If
This Goes On -" occupies partly familiar territory. All the action is on
Earth and Americans still go to church. If anything, sociologically, they have
moved backwards to a form of medievalism with the Prophetic priesthood misusing
modern communications technology until they are overthrown by the Second
American Revolution. By contrast, Ringworld's Children is set not only
much further in the future but also not even on a planetary surface.
Several
intelligent species contend in the space around the Ringworld, sometimes using
anti-matter as a weapon. A ghoul protector uses nanotech to move the Ringworld
out of Known Space through hyper-space. At least three terms here require
explanation: Ringworld; ghoul; protector. But my point is simply the vast
distance travelled conceptually and technologically from "If This Goes
On -" to Ringworld's Children.
However, both Anderson and Niven
have written in an American future historical tradition initiated by
Heinlein. Without Harriman and the Prophets, there might never have been a
Technic Civilisation, a Laurinda or a Ringworld.
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