I haven’t read much science fiction over the last few years. I haven’t even read that much fantasy. I’ve been reading a lot fo mysteries and thrillers. Most of my sicience fiction consumption during the last twelve months was in the form of audiobooks, mainly Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series with a little of David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers thrown in. The bulk of my audio books (what hasn’t been nonfiction) has been Lovecraft, Wellman, Howard, and a little of C,lark Ashton Smith, plus some Conan Doyle and other short story wirters.

What got me to thinking about future histories was the audiobook of Alastair Reynolds’ latest novel, Halcyon Years. It’s a standalone deep space adventure, although I don’t think it falls into the category of space opera for reasons I won’t get into very deeply in order to avoid spolers.  I’ll say this, it’s a clever blend of hardboiled detective and hard science set on a generation ship.

It’s a standalone, and I don’t see how he can pull a sequel out of the ending that won’t be a letdown compared to t his one. I recommend it.

But I degress.

The topic of this post is future histories.

The first future history I read was Larry Niven’s Known Space. (Or rather started reading. I was readin several of them befor eI finished Known Space.) I expecially liked the timeline in Tales of Known Space. I realized later, that this timeline design, a series of arrows from one manjor event to another, looping back to form, I think, three rows, was something Del Rey did.

They had the same kind of timeline in The Best of Cordwainer Smith. Now there’s an unusual future history. Smith was a unique writer. His work might requite a little work to read at time, but he’s worth it.

I’d started reading Alan Dean Foster’s Commonwealth novels a year or two before, but I ddin’t consider them a future history because at the time, most of the books concerned one a few characters at approximately the same point in the future. He didn’t expand the future he was writing about until a few years later.

The next two future histories I dove into were Asimov’s Foundation series and Heilein’s future hisotry.

I mean how could I avoid Foundation. At the time, the series consisted of the original trilogy and a trio of related books. This was well befor he went and tied everything into Foundation series.

Heinlein was very much on my radar in those days. The middle school library had a number of his juveniles on the shelves. The Past Through Tomorrow was in print. I picked up a copy of it easily and dove in.

H. Beam Piper was being reprinted at the time, and gobbled those up. I really liked the way Piper drew on real history. It helped ignite my interest in history. That’s one series that is worth a reread.

I will warn you away from the collection that is supposed to be based on Peper’s notes that attempts to fill in some of the gaps between the books he wroter. It’s The Rise of the Federation, edited by John F. Carr. Some of the stories aren’t bad. Others are just awful. I bpught an electronic copy years ago. Never finished it.

But probably the author who did  the most to incorporate history into his work was Poul Anderson. His Technic series is probably the high water  mark of future histories. There are two main subseries. The Nicholas van Rijn/David Falkayn stories are set earlier in the future history. They deal with intergalactic traders. The second main subsest is the Dominic Flandry series. These concern a secret agent who is trying to prevent the fall of the Terran Empire. They have an overhangin sense of fatalism to them.

I also read Dickson’s Dorsai books, the three that were in the Science Fiction Book Club omnibus, but t hey didn’t make an impression on me. There are reasons for that that had nothing to do with the books but what was going on in my life at the time. I need to give them another try.

These were the main future histories that shaped my reading and thinking in my formative years. Niven, Foster. Heinlein, Asimov, Smith, Piper, and Anderson. i still go back and rerread them (or read stories I missed).

Later there was Mike Resnick’s future history and Stephen Baxter’s.

I’ve read a little of Jerry Pournelle’s future history and intend to read the rest.

Have I missed any of the big ones? What future histories have come along in recent years that I should check out? Or has the future history become a thing of the past?