Future history

Common card · No. 455701

Future history, also anticipatory history or imaginary history, is a narrative convention in science fiction and other speculative fiction involving the presentation of fictional future events as a coherent historical process, encompassing the development of societies, civilizations, or humanity as a whole. It may take the form of a single work, but is most often realized in literary cycles, in which individual texts depict different stages in the history of the same world. The term can also be used to describe the subgenre of science fiction that uses this framework. The scope of the concept of future history is problematic, since in a broad sense nearly any speculative narrative set in the future could be considered an example. In a stricter sense, however, the term refers to works in which processes of historical change play a role as significant as plot and character, and the depicted world is presented as a developing social and cultural system. Compared to other genres, such works...

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