Future history

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This article is about the general concept. For Robert A. Heinlein's series of short stories and novels, see Future History (Heinlein).

A future history is a fictional history of the future used by authors of science fiction and other speculative fiction to construct a common background for stories. 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. The term can also be used to describe the subgenre of science fiction that uses this framework.[1]

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, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga is not generally considered a future history. Standalone stories which trace an arc of history are rarely considered future histories.[citation needed]

Future histories differ from alternate history, in which different outcomes are ascribed to past events, because they consist of imagined events in the writer's future.

History

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls The Ruins; Or, a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, by Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney (published in 1791) probably the first recognizable future history.[2] In it, the narrator is transported into space and sees the Earth as a whole while its history unfolds, which Volney uses to present his political and theological ideas.[3] It lists similar examples from the 19th and 20th centuries by William Delisle Hay, Alfred Döblin (Berge Meere und Giganten), André Maurois, and Olaf Stapledon (Last and First Men and Star Maker). Some of these purported to be excerpts of a history book from the future, having no personal protagonists but rather describing the development of nations and societies over decades and centuries. Such works include:

In science fiction

The first science fiction writer to create a future history may have been

Thrilling Wonder Stories the previous year.[1]

Other future histories

Future becoming past

The future projected in a "future history" can often turn out to be wildly inaccurate.

For example, in 1933

2001: A Space Odyssey
was set in the future and featured developments in space travel and habitation which have not occurred on the timescale postulated.

A 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. Jerry Pournelle's "CoDominium" future history assumed that the Cold War would end with the United States and Soviet Union establishing a co-rule of the world, the CoDominium of the title, which would last into the 22nd Century—rather than the Soviet Union collapsing in 1991.

There are several ways this is dealt with. One solution to the problem is when some authors set their stories in an indefinite future, often in a society where the current calendar has been disrupted due to a

Engines of Light
series.

In other cases, 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.

As with Heinlein, some authors simply write a detailed future history and accept the fact that events will overtake it, making the sequence into a de facto alternate history.

Lastly, some writers formally transform their future histories into alternate history, once they had been overtaken by events. For example, Poul Anderson started The Psychotechnic League history in the early 1950s, assuming a nuclear war in 1958—then a future date. When it was republished in the 1980s, a new foreword was added explaining how that history's timeline diverged from ours and led to war.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Future History". Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. Retrieved 11 January 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Langford, David (2021). "Future Histories". In Clute, John; Langford, David (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (Fourth ed.). London and Reading: SFE Ltd/Ansible Editions. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
  3. ^ Clute, John (2021). "M Volney". In Clute, John; Langford, David (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (Fourth ed.). London and Reading: SFE Ltd/Ansible Editions. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
  4. ^ Ashley, M. (April, 1989). The Immortal Professor, Astro Adventures No.7, p.6.
  5. ^ Clute, John (2021). "Jones, Neil R". In Clute, John; Langford, David (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (Fourth ed.). London and Reading: SFE Ltd/Ansible Editions. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
  6. ^ Robert F. Vernon, "Reasoned and unreasoned speculations about what will be and what might have been" in Marcia Gracie (ed.) "Trends in Speculative Fiction", New York, 1998
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