„Fundacja” i „Honor Harrington”. Jak fantastyka przegoniła rzeczywistość

Abstract

Science fiction novel series Foundation (by Isaac Asimov) and Honorverse (by David Weber) deal with various issues regarding the future of humanity, and specifically with the reasons why this future is inexorably linked with space expansion. One of the reasons given is the fact that Earth is no longer ‘the best possible world,’ and that humans are to blame for that. The state of global affairs since 2020 indicate that we might indeed be on track to realizing a scenario not unlike those describe in Foundation and ׅHonorverse — in which humans are responsible for destroying their own world. That in itself is a compelling reason for conducting a thorough analysis of these works of fiction. The fact that Weber’s series has several mentions of Poland (at quite unflattering ones at that) is also a viable pretext for the considerations presented in this article. The main goal of this study is rather modest — to recount how we got here and whether we still have enough time to reposition ourselves from the place we’re (consiously or not) putting ourselves in.

Keywords

• isaac asimov
• david weber
• gregory benford
• david brin
• frank herbert
• „fundacja”
• „honor harrington”
• przyszłość cywilizacji
• hermann broch
• stanisław lem