Classic American Future History:
From Today into the Future
Non-fiction - by Patrick S. Baker
Defining A Future History
A “future history” is a “grouping of generally independent-seeming sf stories into an overarching ‘History of the Future’." That is to say, a future history is more than just a simple background of a speculative fiction story, but rather is a hypothesized history of future events and is generally used by authors of speculative fiction to build a common background for multiple works of their fiction. A future history may contain stories set in the past, but will also extrapolate forward in time from near the period when the future history framework was created. Sometimes the author or an editor creates the future history timeline, while at other times, readers may construct the future histories timeline from information internal to the authors’ various stories.
Future histories are not alternate histories, where there are alternative outcomes to past events. For example, the South winning the Civil War, or John Kennedy avoiding assassination are Jonbar points which create alternative histories. Instead future history hypothesizes certain outcomes to events in the writer's present and project them into the future.
Nor is a single standalone work, no matter how epic, which traces a great sweep of history, a future history. Books like Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (1930) by Olaf Stapledon, which tells the history of humanity from the present to two billion years in the future, is not a future history in the sense under discussion because it does not involve multiple separate stories using the common framework. Nor is the original Foundation series, which skips forward to approximately 50,000 years into the future before starting a future history. This is because the future history does not start in the present or near future of the date of creation of the framework.
Nor are works such as H. G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come (1933), which is written as a history book published in the year 2106 and has footnotes and references to the works of fictional and real historians of the 20th and 21st centuries. These kinds of works have no individual characters or protagonists, but rather describe the development of nations, societies, planets and other entities over a long period of time, just like actual history books.
Heinlein and Jones: The Start of Future Histories
The term “future history," as used here, was created by John W. Campbell, Jr., the legendary editor of Astounding Science Fiction Magazine from 1937 to 1971, and was described in the February 1941 issue. In reference to Heinlein’s Future History, Campbell said: “All Heinlein’s science fiction is laid against a common background of a proposed future history of the world and of the United States. Heinlein’s worked the thing out in detail…characters, dates of major discoveries, et cetera, plotted in.”
In 1939, Heinlein, while working on the novella, “If This Goes On…” (1940) which concerns a rebellion against a theocratic United States, intended to start interconnecting his stories as he wrote them; by linking names, incidents and other background data in one story to that in other stories. This idea quickly became cumbersome as he had to work through scads of notes each time, when he wanted to make such a background reference. So according to Heinlein himself: “I took an old navigation chart, about 3 x 4 feet, turned it over, made the time scale vertical, then set up five columns: stories, characters, technical data, sociological, remarks.”
Campbell published the chart above in the May 1941 issue of Astounding along with two Heinlein stories included in the Future History, “Universe.”
Most of Heinlein’s Future History stories are published in the anthology The Past Through Tomorrow: "Life-Line," "Misfit," "The Roads Must Roll," "Requiem," "'If This Goes On—'," "Coventry," "Blowups Happen," "Universe," "Methuselah's Children," "Logic of Empire," "'—We Also Walk Dogs'," “Universe," "Space Jockey," "'It's Great to Be Back!'," "The Green Hills of Earth," "Ordeal in Space," "The Long Watch," "Gentlemen, Be Seated!," "The Black Pits of Luna," "Delilah and the Space Rigger," "The Man Who Sold the Moon," "The Menace From Earth," "Searchlight." The anthology also helps define the core canon of stories that are clearly within the framework.
However, Heinlein experts agree that some stories not in the anthology actually belong to the Future History canon, and yet other stories in the book are only “weakly linked” to the series. In his future history Heinlein projected times such as the “Crazy Years,” imperial expansion of humanity through the Solar System, a theocratic dictatorship of the US and finally the “end of human adolescence” and “The First Human Civilization.”
Heinlein was not the first author to build a future history framework which spanned several separate stories, but it was his Future History that certainly inspired other authors to develop their own future histories.
The first “modern future history” is likely the Professor Jameson stories by Neil R. Jones. The various “Professor Jameson” stories were among the most popular published in the science fiction pulps of the 1930s. The basic idea of the series was simple and, at the time also groundbreaking. Jones was the first author to use the word "astronaut" in fiction. Professor Charles Jameson sought, in his final years, to find a way to preserve his body after death. He finally came up with the idea of being put in a satellite and placed in orbit around the Earth. Thus, the vacuum of space would preserve his body. After some forty million years, long after all life on Earth had gone extinct, the Zoromes, space explorers from the planet Zor, enter the solar system and find Professor Jameson's satellite. The Zoromes had achieved their own form of immortality by placing their organic brains inside robot bodies. They revived Jameson and placed his brain in a robot body as well, thus making him a Zorome. After his resurrection as a cyborg, the rest of the stories in the series traced Jameson’s exploits as he travels around the universe.
The first story in the Jameson series, “The Jameson Satellite,” was originally published in the Amazing Stories issue of July 1931. The last of the original stories published was “The Star Killers” in Super Science Stories in August 1951. Most of the previously published stories were collected by Ace Books into five anthologies: The Planet of the Double Sun (1967) ("The Jameson Satellite," "The Planet of the Double Sun," and "The Return of the Tripeds"); The Sunless World (1967), (”Into the Hydrosphere," ”Time's Mausoleum," ”The Sunless World”); Space War (1967), (“Zora of the Zoromes," ”Space War," ”Labyrinth”); Twin Worlds (1967) (”Twin Worlds, ”On the Planet Fragment," ”The Music-Monsters”); Doomsday on Ajiat (1968) (“Doomsday on Ajiat”; “The Metal Moon," ”In the Meteoric Cloud," ”The Accelerated World”). There is no evidence that the Jameson future history inspired Heinlein, but his stories did influence Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl.
Cordwainer Smith and the Instrumentality of Man
Cordwainer Smith is the best-known nom-de-plume of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, a noted East Asia academic and scholar and an expert on psychological warfare. Writing as Smith, Linebarger created The Instrumentality of Man future history. The first story published in the framework was “Scanners Live in Vain” (Fantasy Book, January 1950). The last story published was "War No. 81-Q" (originally published in 1928 when Lineberger was just 15 years old) the story was rewritten and published in 1993 to fit into the Instrumentality.
The definitive collection of the Instrumentality stories is the omnibus edition, The Rediscovery of Man (1993) which has "No, No, Not Rogov!," "War No. 81-Q," "Mark Elf," "The Queen of the Afternoon," "Scanners Live in Vain," "The Lady Who Sailed The Soul," "When the People Fell," "Think Blue, Count Two," "The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All," "The Game of Rat and Dragon," "The Burning of the Brain," "From Gustible's Planet," "Himself in Anachron," "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal," "Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh!," "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," "Under Old Earth," "Drunkboat," "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons," "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard," "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell," "A Planet Named Shayol," "On the Gem Planet," "On the Storm Planet," "On the Sand Planet," "Three to a Given Star," and "Down to a Sunless Sea" and the 1994 novel Norstrilia. Norstrilia was originally published as "The Boy Who Bought Old Earth" and "The Store Of Heart's Desire."
The Instrumentality framework traces history from the mid-1940s to the 160th Century of the Common Era (CE or AD). After human civilization on Earth is shattered by a nuclear war, civilization is revitalized by the family of a Nazi scientist who awakes from suspended animation. After a revolt by “the True Men” against the tyrannical Jwindz, the Instrumentality of Man, a hereditary caste of benign despots is founded. Under the Instrumentality, humanity expands into space using faster-than-light planoforming ships; all the hard, physical labor is performed by rightless animal-derived "underpeople.” Although humans could live forever, using the immortality drug stroon, the life span is fixed at 400 years, except for the Lords and Ladies of the Instrumentality. Life is rather empty, sterile and debauched under the system until it is reformed and reinvigorated by the "Rediscovery of Man."
James Blish’s Cities in Flight
The “Cities in Flight, or “Okie” stories were published as a series of stories, novellas and novels, between 1950 with the publication of “Okie” (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1950) and ending with the 1962 novel, A Life for the Stars. The term “Okie” is borrowed from the name of migrant workers of the Dust Bowl and Depression which fled the Midwest and sought work in California. In the future history, cities fly to the stars in order to escape an economic collapse on Earth and often work as a migrant labor force for human settled planets. All the stories and novels were then collected into the Cities in Flight tetralogy.
Earthman, Come Home (1955) combines the stories "Okie," "Bindlestiff," "Sargasso of Lost Cities" and "Earthman, Come Home." The book describes many adventures of the flying city, New York, under Mayor John Amalfi, in a galaxy with multiple planets settled at different periods of history under slack control of Earth.
They Shall Have Stars (1956), also published under the title Year 2018! Is another “fix-up” novel and incorporates the stories "Bridge" and "At Death's End” and is set in the very early 21st century. In the novel the USSR exists and the Cold War is ongoing. The novel concerns the invention of the two main technologies of the “Okie” timeline. First, gravity manipulators, called "spindizzies" which produce both a faster-than-light (FTL) travel and effective space shielding and are powerful enough to lift whole cities into space, thus “cities in flight." The second discovery is an "anti-agathic" drug, which stops aging.
A Clash of Cymbal also published as The Triumph of Time (1959) follows Amalfi’s New York and the “New Earth” and the planet "He" as they undertake the first intergalactic journey. In the space between the two galaxies, a collision between two universes is detected and the matter-antimatter collision shows the cyclic nature of reality. The colliding universes will end in a transition in between the Big Bang and the Big Crunch. Amalfi guides the "New Earth" residents to compete with an alien culture, called the Web of Hercules, to prevent the aliens from controlling the future.
A Life for the Stars (1962) takes place in 32nd Century CE and is a coming-of-age story that tells of the adventures of 16-year-old Crispin deFord. Crispin is kidnapped and forced aboard Scranton, Pennsylvania, as it leaves Earth. After several adventures, Chris transfers to Amalfi’s New York and is elevated to the position of city manager of New York which gives him resident status and access to anti-agathic drugs.
All the “Okie” stories and novels were collected into an omnibus edition call Cities in Flight in 1970. An exact timeline of the Okie future history is nearly impossible to determine as Blish was coy about the time frame of any given story, or even how much time an individual story was covering. But we know that the timeframe runs from the early 21st Century to at least the 32nd Century.
H. Beam Piper’s Terro-Human Future History
The Terro-Human Future History is Piper's thorough description of human history from 1942 CE to circa 5000 CE. The first story published in the series was the novel, Uller Uprising (also titled Ullr Uprising) in 1952. The last story in the series originally written by Piper, Fuzzies and Other People (1984) was published posthumously.
The stories of the Terro-Human Future History were collected into two anthologies in 1981: Federation which has the stories: "Omnilingual," "Naudsonce," "Oomphel in the Sky" "Graveyard of Dreams" and "When in the Course" and Empire which contains: "The Edge of the Knife," "A Slave is a Slave," "Ministry of Disturbance" "The Return," written with John J. McGuire and "The Keeper." Piper produced seven novels in the series: Uller Uprising (1952), Four-Day Planet (1961), The Cosmic Computer (1963) and Space Viking (1963) and the Fuzzy sub-series: Little Fuzzy (1962) Fuzzy Sapiens (1964) (also called The Other Human Race), and Fuzzies and Other People (1984). The Fuzzy books were collected into The Complete Fuzzy in 1998.
The Terro-Human Future History is an overtly “historical” framework. Piper firmly believed that history repeated itself with similar historical circumstances arising over and over again. For just two examples, the plot of Uller Uprising is a direct science fiction retelling of the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion. In Space Viking; a politician takes over a planet just as Hitler took over Germany.
Piper had the grand ambition to write at least one story per century of his future history. Sadly, broke, alone and depressed, Piper committed suicide in November 1964 at age 60. Despite his relatively low output Piper’s writing decidedly influenced Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr.
Larry Niven’s Known Space
The first-published work in the series, also Niven's first published story ever, was "The Coldest Place," (IF, December 1964) with the current last story of the framework being the 2012 novel Fate of Worlds by Niven and Edward M. Lerner. The Known Space future history charts the next roughly three thousand years of human history and is also the name of the unevenly shaped bubble of interstellar space about 60 light-years across centered on Earth where most of the stories take place. The Known Space timeline spans from the 1970s to the year 3101, with humanity living comfortably on dozens of worlds alongside a number of alien species.
The main set of stories within the Known Space are the novels and collections: World of Ptavvs (1966); A Gift from Earth (1968); Neutron Star (1968) ("Neutron Star," "A Relic of the Empire," "At the Core," "The Soft Weapon," “Flatlander," “The Ethics of Madness," "The Handicapped," "Grendel"); Protector (1973); Tales of Known Space (1975) ("The Coldest Place," "Becalmed in Hell," "Wait It Out," "Eye of an Octopus," "How the Heroes Die," "The Jigsaw Man," "At the Bottom of a Hole," "Intent to Deceive," "Cloak of Anarchy," "The Warriors," "The Borderland of Sol," "There Is a Tide," "Safe at Any Speed"); Flatlander (1976) (“Death by Ecstasy” , “The Defenseless Dead," “ARM," “The Patchwork Girl," and "The Woman in Del Rey Crater"); The Patchwork Girl (1986); Crashlander (1994) ("Neutron Star" "At the Core," "Flatlander," "Grendel," "The Borderland of Sol," "Procrustes").
The Known Space future history includes three sub-series, or universes as well.
The Ringworld cycle: Ringworld (1970) The Ringworld Engineers (1979) The Ringworld Throne (1996) Ringworld's Children (2004).
The Fleet of Worlds series: Fleet of Worlds (2007), Juggler of Worlds (2008), Destroyer of Worlds (2009), Betrayer of Worlds (2010), Fate of Worlds (2012).
And The Man-Kzin Wars which started with Niven’s story “The Warriors” from 1966 and is now an “open universe” with multiple authors contributing to the fifteen volume set of anthologies and novels which discuss the wars between humanity and the feline war-like Kzin.
In the framework, technology has reached near magical levels, particularly in the later stories. Hyperdrive is made available in the later stories, as is teleportation and sonic stun weapons. Automated doctors (autodocs) provide medical care and the anti-aging drug, boosterspice, keeps people young and healthy indefinitely.
Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium
The CoDominium Future History traces the history of humanity from the 1990s CE through the 3040s CE. The framework has three sub-series: The Falkenberg’s Legion series, the Motie or Empire of Man series, and the War World series. The first story in the future history was “A Spaceship for the King," published in 1973 and later expanded into the 1980 novel, King David's Spaceship. The last story in the series, written by Pournelle in collaboration with S. M. Stirling, was the novel The Prince of Mercenaries in 2002. All the Falkenberg Legion stories and novels along with some 20,000 words of new transitional material were published in the 2002 omnibus titled The Prince (The novels: Falkenberg’s’ Legion, Prince of Mercenaries, Go Tell the Spartans, Prince of Sparta).
Falkenberg’s Legion sub-series
Within the future history, the CoDominium (CD) is formed by the United States of America and a reformed and revitalized Soviet Union in the 1990s and early 2000s. The political alliance becomes essentially an oppressive world government and attains stability and peace of a sort by halting scientific research and repressing political dissent. One of the last discoveries before research was halted is faster than light travel with the Alderson Drive.
From the 2010s to the 2040s forced colonization to other star systems is used as a social “relief value." The colony worlds are patrolled by the CoDominium Navy which perceives that Earth is headed for disaster, and see its primary mission is to get as many people away from Earth as possible. The CD crumbles under mounting nationalism and many underdeveloped colony worlds are given their independence. On some of the newly freed planets, society collapses.
As the CoDominium contracts, demobilized CD Marine units form mercenary organizations, like Falkenberg's Mercenary Legion, fighting in and for the former colonies; mercenaryism becomes an industry for many planets. Mercenaries are legalized and regulated by the "Laws of War." Meanwhile on Earth, the long delayed Third World War, which included massive nuclear exchanges, results in widespread devastation and the collapse of Earth’s civilization.
Motie or Empire of Man sub-series
Just before the Third World War, the bulk of the CoDominium Fleet manages to rescue their families from Earth. The families are resettled by nationality on various planets; Americans on Sparta; Russians on St. Ekaterina, Brits on Churchill, Israeli’s on Dayan and so on. A few years later the Fleet swears allegiance to King Lysander I of Sparta and starts the Formation Wars. They reunify the human colonies into the Empire of Man under Spartan leadership. For several centuries, the Empire is the sole government of humanity.
Secession Wars
In the 2800s, objecting to the Imperial government, genetically engineered supermen called the Sauron lead several worlds in an open revolt. The Secession Wars go on for decades and ultimately the Saurons are defeated by the Empire but the victory is Pyrrhic. A new dark age descends on most of the old empire with only a small core of loyal planets surviving unharmed. Most outer worlds decline into barbarism.
Second Empire of Man
In the 30th century, Lysander IV of Sparta declares the formation of the Second Empire of Man, and swears to reunite humanity, by force if required. Many worlds quickly accept; others, continue to resist the new empire. Against this background humanity makes its first contact with another intelligent, spacefaring species: the "Moties."
War World series
The series runs parallel in time to the period of the Secession Wars and the Second Empire. The series has five short story collections by various authors and two novels. Most stories take place on Haven, a barely habitable moon of a super gas giant orbiting Byer's star. The stories generally involve battles between Haven's people and the Sauron supermen.
Much like Piper’s Terro-Human series, many of the stories in the CoDominium play on the theme of similar historical situations repeating. For just two examples, the break up of the First Empire is a clear call back to the Fall of the Roman Empire followed by the Dark Ages. Also, the rise of mercenary forces fighting small wars at the end of the CoDominium Era is a direct analog to the Condottieri fighting in Italy in the 14th to the 16th Century.
Why Future Histories?
Of course, the above is not an exhaustive look at futures histories. Ursula K. Le Quin’s Hainish Cycle could have been included, although Le Quin said it was not a future history. Nor are future histories limited to American writers, for example the Strugatsky brothers' Noon Universe and Andrey Livadny's The History of the Galaxy are Russian. The Revelation Space Future History is written by Alastair Reynolds from Great Britain. All of this begs the question of why do authors develop and write within future histories?
First reason is it is convenient to write within the acknowledged framework. As the Russian author Arkady Strugatsky states, he and his brother, Boris, did not start out to create a future history, but rather, only later did they start to build the future history framework because they found it easy to reuse the background and characters.
Further, a future history gives an author a large canvas on which to write. The framework allows an author to explore large themes; such as repeating cycles of history, or the effect of technology on humanity, over a long stretch of fictional time.
Marketing is another reason for the creation of a future history. One study stated that as many as 80% of people who buy and read the first book in a series may read the other books in a series. Future histories, being essentially “super-series” would definitely encourage book buying after a reader discovers and likes the future history. Also, publishers can generate more sales by producing omnibus editions which collect the various stories and novels of the future history into a single volume. Even readers that have read previous books in the framework will purchase omnibus, or definitive collection, editions.
In short, future histories have been popular with writers, editors and readers since they were first created and will no doubt continue to be popular into the future.
Sources:
Ashley, Michael, ed. The History of Science Fiction Magazine. Part 2: 1936 - 1945. (London: New English Library, 1975).
Blish, James. Cities in Flight (New York: Avon, 1970).
Campbell, John W. “In Times to Come," Astounding Science Fiction Magazine (February, 1941), 67.
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, The. Edited by John Clute, David Langford and Peter Nicholls (London: Gollancz, 2011)
Heinlein, Robert A. “Brass Tacks," Astounding Science Fiction Magazine (May, 1941) 124-125.
_______. The Past Through Tomorrow (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1967).
Internet Speculative Fiction Database, The. http://www.isfdb.org/.
Piper, H. Beam. Federation (New York: Ace Books,1981).
_______. Empire (New York: Ace Books,1981).
_______. The Complete Fuzzy (New York: Ace Books,1998).
Pournelle, Jerry and S. M. Stirling. The Prince (Riverdale, NY: Bean Publishing, 2002).
Smith, Cordwainer. The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, (Framingham, MA: NESFA Press, 1993).