Future history
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- This article focuses on future histories in general. For Robert A. Heinlein's series of short stories and novels, see Future History.
A future history is a postulated history of the future that some science fiction authors construct as a common background for fiction. Sometimes the author publishes a timeline of events in the history, while other times the reader can reconstruct the order of the stories from information provided therein.
A set of stories which share a backdrop but are not really concerned with the sequence of history in their universe are rarely considered future histories. For example, neither Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga nor George R. R. Martin's 1970s short stories which share a backdrop are generally considered future histories. Standalone stories which trace an arc of history are rarely considered future histories. For example, Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz is not generally considered a future history.
Notable future histories
Other notable future histories:
- Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Conscience for Change (1967)
- Thomas King's A Native Narrative (2003). [1]
- Michael Crichton's State of Fear (2004). [2]
- Iain M. Banks' The Culture.
- Frank Herbert's Dune.
- John Varley's Eight Worlds series
- Larry Niven's Known Space series.
- George Orwell's 1984 from (1949).
- Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium series.
- Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and its sequels.
- The Strugatsky brothers' Noon Universe.
- Cordwainer Smith's The Rediscovery of Man.
- Neil R. Jones - Ace Books' anthology (1960s)
- H. Beam Piper's Terro-Human Future History.
- Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October (1984).
- Paul McAuley's Four Hundred Billion Stars series (1988).
- Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's Fail-Safe (1962).
- William Lederer and Eugene Burdick The 480 social commentary (1965).
- John Casti's The Cambridge Quintet: A Work of Scientific Speculation (1998) [3]
- Corey Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Social capital econometrics (2003)
- Isaac Asimov's robots, empire, and Foundation stories (the link between the robots stories and the others is a retcon).
Key attributes
Unlike alternate history, where alternative outcomes are ascribed to past events; future history postulates certain outcomes to future events.
One problem with future history science fiction is that it will date and be overtaken by real historical events (for instance, H. Beam Piper's future history, which included a nuclear war in 1973, and much of the future history of Star Trek). There are several ways this is dealt with.
First, some authors set their stories in an indefinite future, often in a society where the current calendar has been disrupted due to a societal collapse or undergone some form of distortion due to the impact of technology. Related to the first, some stories are set in the very remote future and only deal with the author's contemporary history in a sketchy fashion, if at all (e.g. the original Foundation Trilogy by Asimov.).
In other cases, such as the Star Trek universe, the merging of the fictional history and the known history is done through extensive use of retroactive continuity. In yet other cases such as the Doctor Who television series and the fiction based on it, much use is made of secret history, in which the events that take place are largely secret and not known to the general public.
Lastly, such as the case with Heinlein, some authors simply write a detailed future history and accept the fact that events will overtake it and it will become de-facto alternate history. (This last phenomenon partly inspired a new genre named steam punk, where authors write from the perspective of a past (generally Victorian) point of view and extrapolate a different "future" from that point forward.)