Talk:Future History (Heinlein)

Untitled
I removed the redirect to the Future history article in the discussion section, since this is now its own article. --Mosesroth 3 Aug 06

Drop Early Incarnations and Other Future Histories ?
(These notes are primarily for Moses, but also for anyone else who has an interest in this article.)

I reviewed James Gifford's list here:

4.1 - What is the Future History?

And also the list he published in Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader's Companion. I think it makes the most sense to show a single all-inclusive Future History chart, with footnotes to indicate stories that were either (d) dropped, (u) unwritten, or (c) compatible with the Future History, but not canonical.

This is more or less what Future History currently shows under Chronology:


 * Life-Line
 * "—And He Built a Crooked House—" (d1)
 * "Let There Be Light" (d2)
 * Word Edgewise (u1)
 * The Roads Must Roll
 * Blowups Happen
 * The Man Who Sold the Moon
 * Delilah and the Space-Rigger
 * Space Jockey
 * Requiem
 * The Long Watch
 * Gentlemen, Be Seated
 * The Black Pits of Luna
 * Nothing Ever Happens On the Moon (c1)
 * "It"s Great to Be Back!"
 * "--We Also Walk Dogs"
 * Searchlight
 * Ordeal in Space
 * The Green Hills of Earth
 * Fire Down Below! (u2)
 * Logic of Empire
 * The Menace from Earth
 * Columbus Was a Dope (c2)
 * The Sound Of His Wings (u3)
 * Eclipse (u4)
 * The Stone Pillow (u5)
 * "If This Goes On--"
 * Coventry
 * Misfit
 * Methuselah's Children
 * Universe
 * Common Sense
 * Time Enough for Love
 * To Sail Beyond The Sunset (c3)
 * (And at this point, we diverge to World As Myth)

(TPTT = "The Past Through Tomorrow"):


 * (d1) Does not appear in TPTT; possibly considered sub-standard.
 * (d2) Does not appear in TPTT; Gifford has two possible explanations – (1) Heinlein might have considered it sub-standard (it was a 1940 'Lyle Monroe' story); (2) the editor of TPTT simply didn't like the story. These theories are based on Heinlein's accession notes to the UCSC archives, 1967.  Arguments for including it are (1) Douglas and Martin do appear as individuals in the Future History chart (pages 660-661 of TPTT) and (2) Douglas-Martin sun-power screens are important plot elements in "The Roads Must Roll", "Blowups Happen", and "The Man Who Sold The Moon", and they are mentioned in "To Sail Beyond The Sunset."


 * (u1) Unwritten, no details known.
 * (u2) Unwritten, about a revolution in Antarctica.
 * (u3) Unwritten, the story of Nehemiah Scudder's rise to power
 * (u4) Unwritten, the transition of the U.S. from republic to theocracy
 * (u5) Unwritten, the early resistance movement, which takes us up to "-If This Goes On".

Gifford calls these "Works that fit into the Future History but were never officially included":
 * (c1) Not officially part of Future History; Gifford includes it himself with the comment that Heinlein said it was "not incompatible with the Future History."
 * (c2) Gifford includes this as Future History (alternate); it's not officially included.
 * (c3) Clearly part of the Future History; it's in part a retelling of "Time Enough for Love" and "The Man Who Sold the Moon" from Maureen's perspective.

I'm a bit confused about the "Early Incarnations" section and the breakdown between Original Future History and Second Future History. This reads like original research. The list we should document on this page is the one shown under Chronology; I've never heard of Heinlein breaking it up into two categories like this.

The "Other Future Histories" section is also questionable. There were sometimes cross-references between stories (the most obvious examples being Gulf->Friday and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress->The Rolling Stones->The Cat Who Walks Through Walls), but this whole section should be trimmed down to a simple observation that Heinlein sometimes carried plot points between stories. (I would argue that the whole section needs to go; it has nothing to do with the Future History series.)

Arguably, we could include a section here about World As Myth, as those books are an offshoot from the Future History.

-- Jim Douglas 06:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything you said here. This page is basically a re-edit of User:Kthgibson's, so if you think if you think it's original research, you're probably right. I say go for it. One thing I like about the current incarnation is that the main chronology of the Future History is upfront, so that readers who are new to it don't get confused by what they should start reading or in what order. If we start them straight off with a bunch of unwritten stories and annotations about whether a story actually belongs or not, they might get daunted. Maybe we could put a main Future History at the top and then all the unwritten stories and stories that may or may not belong down below in a separate section. Or there could be standard Future History at the top and then a complete Future History down below. There a lot of ways to go with it. I think the main thing is to be clear. mosesroth 08:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Text cut from article 2006-10-20
Text below was cut from the main article as original research or unrelated to the main article topic.

Early Incarnations
Heinlein’s Future History was compiled from two earlier future histories by Heinlein, by retconning them together and removing some of the stories and novels and adding in other stories. One, written before World War II, was called Future History, but was different in many respects and it is listed below as "Original Future History". The other, written after World War II, was never given a name, but is called "Second Future History" below.

Original Future History
The stories in the "Original Future History" include a story (marked with an *) that would be retroactively removed when the final Future History was created, another that was sometimes included and sometimes not (marked with an ^), and a third story written at this time, but not included in the "Original Future History" (marked with a **).


 * Life-Line (1939)
 * ^"Let There Be Light" (~1949)
 * *"—And He Built a Crooked House—" (~1950)
 * The Roads Must Roll (~1976)
 * Blowups Happen (~1977)
 * Requiem (~2010)
 * Logic of Empire (~2025)
 * "If This Goes On—" (~2075)
 * Coventry (~2110)
 * Misfit (~2110)
 * Methuselah's Children (2136 - 2210)
 * Universe (~2600?)
 * Common Sense (~2600?)
 * **We Also Walk Dogs

Second Future History
After World War II, Heinlein thought space flight was just around the corner, and wished to show the readership how humanity would conquer the Solar system. He started a second future history (called here "Second Future History"), though he never officially gave it a name. The stories marked with an * would be retroactively compiled with the "Original Future History" to create the Future History in its final form.


 * Rocket Ship Galileo
 * *Space Jockey
 * *Gentlemen, Be Seated!
 * *The Black Pits of Luna
 * *"It's Great to Be Back!"
 * *The Long Watch
 * Red Planet
 * *The Green Hills of Earth
 * *Ordeal in Space
 * The Rolling Stones
 * Farmer in the Sky
 * Space Cadet

Other Future Histories
Heinlein also published other future histories, unrelated to the main Future History.

Unnamed Series
With the short stories from the "Second Future History" moved to the final Future History, that left the novels, all juveniles, in an unnamed series. The novel Time for the Stars and the short story "Sky Lift" both seem to be related to these novels, because Ortega Torchships are the mode of interplanetary travel in both these stories as well as in the novel Farmer in the Sky, but there is no direct linkage otherwise. In addition, Stranger in a Strange Land appears to be a prequel to Red Planet and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress appears to be a prequel to The Rolling Stones, but they are otherwise unrelated to the other books in the unnamed series.


 * Rocket Ship Galileo
 * Red Planet
 * The Rolling Stones aka Space Family Stone aka Tramp Space Ship
 * Farmer in the Sky aka Satellite Scout
 * Space Cadet
 * Sky Lift
 * Time for the Stars

Miscellaneous
Heinlein also wrote other stories and novels, some of them interelated, making series. This includes the novella "Gulf" and the novel Friday which are in the same series and the novels Between Planets and Starman Jones which are in another.

There are some common elements in Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and since both stories have connections with other stories, they seem to belong to the same timeline (in the World as Myth concept), the Timeline 3.

Text above this line was cut from the main article as original research or unrelated to the main article topic. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs)  04:14, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Comments on rewrite
I agree with your cuts and edits, Jim Douglas. I think eliminating the original research is necessary, and the rest of the edits make the article clearer and much better. Hu 05:33, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! It seemed cleaner to me last night, but you never know how it'll look the next day.  I hesitate to open this up again, but is any of the material I excised worth putting back, or moving to a new page? -- Jim Douglas (talk)  (contribs)  14:11, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * To answer my own question, I don't think there's anything here worth putting back in the article. Wherever there are clear connections between stories, we can just note them on the individual story pages. -- Jim Douglas (talk)  (contribs)  15:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree this should be in Talk. Because SiaSL is not a prequel to Red Planet, they simply share a similar variety of Martian (with bouncers and Old Ones) and have a similar incident (Beecher's disappearance in RP is echoed by the disappearance, told to us, of Agnew (I think that was his name)).  Similarly, MiaHM is not a prequel to RS, they simply have a character named Hazel Stone in common. A closer relationship is Dahlquist, of The Long Watch, becoming a hero of the Patrol in Space Cadet (he is called Ezra Dahlquist in SC, John Ezra Dahlquist in TLW).--Wehwalt 11:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd be surprised if BP and SJ were in the same universe. The "doming" technology developed by the Venus rebels does not seem to be present in SJ.--Wehwalt 11:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it's too cumbersome to have multiple versions in the article. The article needs to be useful to the average reader, not fanboys like us :-) I just came acoss the discussion in the front of Gifford's Reader's Companion myself; I think it would be more useful to cite that rather than Gifford's FAQ page (or maybe we could cite both). Although the old version of the article was too complicated, I also don't think we should misrepresent the real situation, which is that the FH ws a fluid thing, with fluid boundaries. That's not original research -- Gifford's book documents it amply. I'll take a whack later today.--24.52.254.62 16:06, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd be interested in reading what Patterson had to say on the future history; is there any way you can put his posting up here? (And if Patterson's active on that list, has he commented recently on when the biographical book will be done?)  Regarding Gifford's RAH:ARC versus the online FAQ, we can cite both.  I tend to refer to the book myself, but the online FAQ is much more accessible to the average reader. -- Jim Douglas (talk)  (contribs)  16:17, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * The Definition section improves the article; thanks for adding it. re: Let There Be Light, there's one more piece of objective evidence that it was considered to be an inferior story: the original byline was Lyle Monroe.  See Heinlein's February 1941 letters to Campbell excerpted on page 10 of Grumbles From The Grave for comments about using the "Lyle Monroe" byline for "stinkeroos" (Heinlein's term). -- Jim Douglas (talk)  (contribs)  16:35, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I've changed the first Gifford reference so it gives both the link to the (more accessible) FAQ and the (more reliable and detailed) book. Patterson's usenet post can be found easily using Google Groups' search mechanism. I think this link might work: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_frm/thread/8ebe7f061284cdc1/3b4fe76d9bfbff6e?tvc=1#3b4fe76d9bfbff6e Re the juveniles, I've added an extended quote from Gifford, plus a sentence about Variable Star's unique situation.--24.52.254.62 18:25, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for that link! I need to join that group.


 * For an explicit statement that Heinlein didn't consider the juveniles to be part of the Future History, see the Concerning Stories Never Written postscript in Revolt in 2100: "In the case of Eclipse I have dealt with the themes involved at greater length in two novels which were not bound by the Procrustean Bed of a fictional chart...." -- Jim Douglas (talk)  (contribs)  19:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm hoping to get Spider's take this weekend on how Variable Star fits into the Future History. My feeling at the moment is that it doesn't really fit; the discrepancies are too significant. -- Jim Douglas (talk)  (contribs)  19:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I suppose. Though that a world that went through 9/11 doesn't fit into the Future History sort of speaks for itself.--Wehwalt 13:01, 21 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. While Spider isn't the first to make that connection, the 9/11 references didn't work for me. -- Jim Douglas (talk)  (contribs)  15:55, 21 October 2006 (UTC)


 * FWIW, I added some brief notes to Talk:Variable Star. -- Jim Douglas <sup style="color:green;">(talk) <sub style="color:gray;">(contribs)  14:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Why were the dates from most stories cut out of the page? There's no logical reason to keep, for example, 4272 for Time Enough for Love and not add other approximative dates to the other stories. Albmont 16:37, 21 October 2006 (UTC)


 * It was the "approximate" part that concerned me; the Time Enough for Love reference comes directly from the book. Based on WP:NOR, I cut all dates that aren't taken directly from the stories or from Heinlein's own notes or comments.  Heinlein says in the Concerning Stories Never Written postscript to Revolt in 2100 that all of the stories in The Green Hills of Earth collection ("Delilah and the Space-Rigger," "Space-Jockey," "The Long Watch," "Gentlemen Be Seated," "The Black Pits of Luna," "It's Great to Be Back," "We Also Walk Dogs," "Ordeal in Space," "The Green Hills of Earth" and "Logic of Empire") take place "somewhere close around the year 2000 A.D. [...] Nor does the order matter materially--some of the stories overlap in time but concern different characters in differing scenes."  There's no way to assign specific years to each story.  (He then goes on to say that "If This Goes On—" is set about 75 years after that group of stories, putting it close to 2075.) If there are other stories that give years -- or even infer them relative to some other story -- then of course we can include those references. -- Jim Douglas <sup style="color:green;">(talk)  <sub style="color:gray;">(contribs)  17:16, 21 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, let's fix ourselves in the "aproximate" part. Why keep 1976 for The Rolls Must Roll, when there's no absolute certainty about that, or 1976-1979 for The Man Who Sold the Moon, and remove the other dates? Also, there's no reason to fix the return of New Fronties in 2210; it might as well be 2211. My point is that the best we can get are approximate dates for everything, so why keep some dates and eliminate others? I would find more useful to include all dates, giving the uncertainty that we have for them. Even some canonical dates like 2012 are hard to explain, AFAIK all USA pr elections are in (4*n) years, but the presidents only take power in the next Year. BTW, I guess by now you are aware of my timeline pages; feel free to take anything from them and bash my erros at will :-) Albmont 17:35, 21 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I hope other people weigh in here…my opinion is just my opinion. But I do think we need to avoid outright speculation.  And you're right; the only clue I see in The Roads Must Roll is that it's sometime after 1966, so unless there's evidence I'm missing, 1976 is speculative.  I haven't checked The Man Who Sold The Moon recently; if my memory is wrong about dates being given, then they need to be removed as well.  The return year of the New Frontiers is known exactly – Justin Foote quotes it in the introduction to Time Enough for Love.  The goal is to clearly distinguish what is known (and yes, I appreciate the absurdity of fixing specific dates in a fictional universe) versus what is speculative. -- Jim Douglas <sup style="color:green;">(talk)  <sub style="color:gray;">(contribs)  18:01, 21 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe we should not waste too much time in this subject, when there are so many holes in Heinlein's Wiki, like characters that should have at least a one-line entry in List of Robert A. Heinlein characters :-) Albmont 01:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)


 * There's definitely no shortage of stuff to do. Actually, List of Robert A. Heinlein characters looks like it can use a detailed review; Sam is listed as Elihu Nivens (aka Sam Cavanaugh), which is fair enough, but there are duplicate entries for Allucquere and Mary . -- Jim Douglas <sup style="color:green;">(talk)  <sub style="color:gray;">(contribs)  01:59, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

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So what happened?
It seems to me that the article should say something about what happens in the Future History. It's been years since I've read THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW, but I remember the main points as: (1) The development of space travel, not by the US government but by a private businessman, Harriman. (2) The overthrow of the US government by a phony religious leader, Nehemiah Scudder. (3) The eventual defeat of Scudder, followed by an attempt to found a Utopian society. CharlesTheBold (talk) 05:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

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Why is the actual chart not included?
Even though there are multiple incarnations of the chart, why is one of them not included in-line with this piece, to show it?

https://web.archive.org/web/20151105170345/http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133417/1439133417___1.htm

It seems jarringly lacking for it to not be here, as it is (AFAIK) the first of its type. OBloodyHell (talk) 14:17, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It would be a violation of copyright. Schazjmd   (talk)  16:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)