Monday 11 April 2016

Standing Back

After a day of Latin verse in the Augustan Age, I return to English prose and future histories. I have nearly finished rereading "Pele," Poul Anderson's third Man-Kzin Wars story. We have seen that:

Anderson and the Pournelle-Stirling collaborative team each wrote a Man-Kzin Wars trilogy;

these two trilogies overlap in terms of characters and settings.

Pulling back to the wider perspective, let us again consider:

Heinlein's Future History;
Asimov's Robots and Empire History;
Blish's Cities In Flight;
Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories and Tau Zero;
Herbert's Dune History;
Niven's Known Space History;
Pournelle's CoDominium History;
Stirling's Draka History.

These works comprise:

nine American future histories about interstellar civilizations with faster than light capability;
one work that takes slower than light travel to its ultimate conclusion in the setting of cosmic future history.

The Psychotechnic History imitates the Future History;
the Technic History is a less well known but better written account of an interstellar empire than either Asimov's or Herbert's series;
Tau Zero is cosmological hard sf like the culminating volume of Cities In Flight;
Anderson contributed to Asimov's, Niven's and Pournelle's future histories;
Niven and Stirling contributed to Pournelle's and Pournelle and Stirling contributed to Niven's.

Somewhere in all this is what I will read or reread next.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I finished reading the second volume of David Wingrove's CHUNG KUO series: DAYLIGHT ON IRON MOUNTAIN. Alas, publication of the series was suspended after eight volumes.

I'm currently rereading parts of Poul Anderson's STARSHIP. And I've also started THE STORY OF KULLVERVO, by JRR Tolkien (ed. by Christopher Tolkien).

Sean