Talk:Future history

Comments

--207.235.162.254 14:21, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)Removed and replaced the following:

Future History was constructed by Robert A. Heinlein as the structure that ties together many of his novelllas and short stoies.

I think the term is more general than that. Mark Foskey

Banks culture is set in parallel to our time, e.g. one of the books depicts a visit of a culture ship to 1970s earth. So I doubt the classifcation as future history makes sense. -- till we *) 15:32, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You may ask well what if we need a timeline. Than i would ask you to go to search and type in time line. --207.235.162.254 14:21, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Re*Visioning Tom Clancy's USNA Alumni Inspiration

File:Tell-Show-QRx2-Fishbone 4o24am.jpg

Inspired by author Kenneth C. Davis in "Don't Know Much About Geography"

Visio fishbone diagram adapts insights from this Eco-Futures Forum visual learning reference: ISBN 0064408345 ( Don't Know Much about Planet Earth )
RJBurkhart 01:31, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Futures studies connections

Many people might be surprised to learn that Robert A. Heinlein (USNA Class of 1929),
possibly the most influential science-fiction writer ever, was a Naval Academy alumnus.

So too was William Lederer (USNA Class of 1936), co-author of The Ugly American. Trident (April 26, 1996)
RJBurkhart 11:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the reference to Iain Banks's Culture novels from the list. While it's a coherent SF setting, it has very little connection with the history of humanity -- indeed, the sole Earth-based story is set in the past (1977). Phil PH 11:33, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Image copyright

Unfortunately I think the timeline graphic is still in copyright. It was originally published in 1941; the copyright was either Heinlein's or the magazine. It was reprinted in short story collections; my copy has copyright by Heinlein with no acknowledgement to the magazine. Heinlein died in 1985, so that's only 21 years; I believe the law is 75 or 100 years. I've tagged it and it's likely to be removed shortly. If someone wants to go to the trouble of reconstructing it, I think that would not suffer copyright problems, though I'm not a copyright expert. Mike Christie 13:28, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Alt -source of purged future history timeline:

https://minerva.fandom.com/wiki/Future_History_Timeline GeoVenturing (talk) 19:10, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Heinlein not so "de facto"

Most of the Heinlein stories I have read usually include some mention of events or other factors that are clearly not present in the real history that was current at the time of writing (such as airships instead of airplanes in Job) this makes them actual parallel universes rather than "de facto".

Additional comment on this. Later stories (especially To Sail Beyond the Sunset) explicitly mention that there are multiple time lines (alternate histories) but that the primary characters in his earlier stories were from one which is not the one we live in. As I recall the time adjusting orgainization in that story generally used the name of the first person to step on the moon, and the related date, as their tag for the alternate time lines. So, while they were originally future history stories, they later, retroactively, became explicit alternate time line stories. Wjl2 (talk) 22:02, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Third World War and future history

There were a number of books with variants on "The Third World War" (mostly involving "the West" against the then Soviet Union, and often giving the latter an advantage) - some mention should be made of them, individually or collectively. Jackiespeel (talk) 17:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Do all the examples really belong?

I noticed The Uglies Series on the list, and having read those books, they mostly take place at a single period in future history with just a sketch of the history leading up to that point, no detailed chronology of future events or anything like that. By that standard, virtually any sci-fi story taking place in the future which gives some brief account of events between now and then would qualify as a "future history", which seems much too broad. I suspect the same may be true of a lot of the other examples listed in the article. Can we specify that "future history", if not actually providing a detailed chronology, should at least devote significant chunks of the story to multiple future time periods? And maybe people familiar with the stories listed could remove the ones that don't fit this template? Hypnosifl (talk) 18:20, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I have read The Giver quartet, and it does not satisfy the definition of future history in this article. 50.199.213.169 (talk) 12:46, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

The first future history is ...?

Assertions of 'first to ...' can be risky. The article offers one cite for the assertion that "Neil R. Jones is generally credited as the first author to create a future history". It depends on how this vague term is defined. I'll just point out the 1889 novel The Last American by John Ames Mitchell as a possible counter-example and leave the question for someone intimately familiar with the topic to resolve. Twang (talk) 18:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

After London, a few years earlier, might be another counter-example. Barnabypage (talk) 19:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

As defined on the page, a future history is a timeline of events created by an author, on which more than one novel or story is based. It's not just a book that happens to talk about the future. What other book or story shares the future history timeline used in The Last American and can you point to a reference to the explicit future historical timeline apart from the one book you mentioned? For example, Robert Heinlein's future history timeline exists as a separate document that he used as a reference when writing his books, that's really what we're talking about here - not just science fiction books set in the future. Steevithak (talk) 21:47, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. Track your hook after promotion. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Sxchen1110 (talk) 20:00, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that works presenting future history of humanity have been penned since at least the late 18th century? Source: https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/future_histories and other sources
  • ALT1: ... that some works of future history imitate academic historiography, presenting the future through fictional documents, chronologies, and scholarly commentary? Source: Sawyer (2009): "Smith’s stories are tales, fables, and histories looked back on from a far future. Asimov’s are similarly retrospective but, instead of Smith’s more flexible but less specific oral narratives, extracts from the Encyclopedia Galactica introduce individuals and events, providing not only snippets of important information but also a more formal context." and "In the appendix to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), the narrator’s account becomes the subject of future-scholars’ attempts to tease out its relationship to their world... Atwood’s confrontation of the events she has described through “scholarly” discourse allows us to ponder uneasily about how scholars construct models of history rather than describe or empathize with past events"
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Pisces VII

5x expanded by Piotrus (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 597 past nominations.

_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:48, 2 May 2026 (UTC).

• Comment: 5x count: before my edit, script counts: Prose size (text only): 2316 B (373 words) "readable prose size". Current version: 12 kB (1914 words) "readable prose size". --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:51, 2 May 2026 (UTC)
• Sufficiently expanded and long enough. Earwig only flagged some quotes and book titles, meaning I don't see why it can't be accepted. Nighfidelity (talk) 14:00, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Infinite Jest

@Piotrus: I'd like to include Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, maybe as an unusual example of both future history and political fiction, but I'm not sure exactly where it fits in. Renerpho (talk) 09:36, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

@Renerpho First, we need a RS that calls it a future history - otherwise we run into a WP:OR. Then we can expand on what the RS says about this work in the context of the future history concept. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:42, 11 June 2026 (UTC)