Monday 30 January 2017

The Best Future History Omnibus Collection

A future history can be a single novel, e.g.:

The Shape Of Things To Come by HG Wells;
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon;
A Short History Of The Future by RC Churchill;
Genesis by Poul Anderson -

- or a single collection, e.g.:

Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand by Brian Aldiss;
The Seedling Stars by James Blish;
Tales Of The Flying Mountains by Poul Anderson -

- or a single omnibus volume, e.g.:

The Past Through Tomorrow by Robert Heinlein;
Cities In Flight by James Blish;
potentially, the Rustum History by Poul Anderson -

or may be too long to fit into a single volume, e.g.:

the Robots and Empire History by Isaac Asimov;
the Known Space History by Larry Niven;
the CoDominium History by Jerry Pournelle;
the History of Technic Civilization by Poul Anderson;
the Harvest of Stars History by Poul Anderson.

We have cited five examples by Anderson but have not yet exhausted the full list of this single author's future histories. Known Space and the Technic History each have a representative collection:

Tales Of Known Space;
The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

The Earth Book is an omnibus collection of eleven stories and one novel with new introductory passages. It introduces or incorporates many aspects of the History and even anticipates the Dominic Flandry series by introducing Merseia and mentioning the Empire. Thus, it is a remarkably comprehensive future history omnibus collection.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

If it's not too bulky I can see the sense in collecting all the stories set in the History of Rustum universe in one volume. It would comprise ORBIT UNLIMITED and NEW AMERICA, the latter of which includes "The Queen Of Air And Darkness" and "Home."

NEW AMERICA also includes Poul Anderson's non fiction article "Our Many Roads To The Stars." Which I shoud reread, possibly as a fleshing out of what Anderson wrote for his "Commentary" in SPACE FOLK.

And Anderson made contributions to Larry Niven's Known Space and Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium timelines. Albeit the latter was a single short story set in the War World sub series.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
"The Queen of Air and Darkness" is in the Rustum timeline but "Home" is in the Directorate timeline. See my "full list" link on this post.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree, "Home" does not truly belong in NEW AMERICA, being set in the Directorate timeline, not the Rustum series. I even had some uncertainty about that when I wrote my first note.

So, any volume collecting the Rustum series would have to exclude "Home."

Sean